To Make Much of Time
by chocolatequeen
Summary: He said she had something of the Wolf about her. What did that mean? What if Rose had asked the Doctor about this? What if it meant more than either of them realised? A series 2 canon divergence fic starting with Tooth and Claw and following the changes through Doomsday.
1. Chapter 1

The monk pushed Rose and Flora onto the cellar floor and chained them to the wall. "A few more ladies to keep you company, Lady Isobel."

Hay pricked Rose's legs through her tights and her knees stung from the rough landing. "Oi, a bit more careful, if you don't mind," she protested, but he just smirked and slammed the door with a clang.

Rose squinted, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. As far as cells went, it wasn't the poshest place she'd been held, but it could've been worse. It seemed dry at least, which was a slight comfort.

Of the four other people in the room, three were dressed in servants' uniforms and one in a fine dark blue dress. _That'd be Lady Isobel then,_ Rose figured. The younger maid was most likely her ladyship's lady's maid, the older woman the missing cook, and then…

A moan from the other end of the room interrupted her thoughts before she could place the man. Lady Isobel stiffened, and Rose followed her gaze to a cage resting beneath the open window.

"Don't make a sound," the Lady Isobel whimpered. "They said if we scream or shout, then he will slaughter us."

Rose glanced back and forth between the person in the cage and Lady Isobel. A heavy hood covered the face, but the form was clearly human. "But he's in a cage. He's a prisoner. He's the same as us."

Her ladyship's features tightened. "He's nothing like us. That creature is not mortal." As if on cue, the hooded figure opened his eyes, and even Rose shifted back a bit; his eyes were pure black.

But Rose knew from experience that strange things weren't always bad. She studied the creature for a minute, then she got to her feet and moved slowly toward the cage. Lady Isobel pleaded with her to stop, but instead, Rose took another step forward, stopping only when she'd reached the end of the chain.

Ignoring the slight twinge of pain where the cuff dug into her wrist, she focused on the person in front of her. "Who are you?" she asked.

The flash of something alien in the creature's eyes didn't deter Rose, despite the warnings from behind her. "Where are you from?" she asked, slowly crouching down until she was at eye level with him. "You're not from Earth. What planet are you from?"

"Ah, intelligence!" he purred with satisfaction, holding himself unnaturally still.

His voice was unnerving, but Rose licked her lips and tried again. "Where were you born?"

Despite the fact that he was in a cage, the boy seemed to know he was in charge of the interview. "This body?" he asked disinterestedly. "Ten miles away. A weakling, heartsick boy, stolen away at night by the Brethren for my cultivation." His voice deepened with menace. "I carved out his soul and sat in his heart."

Flora and Lady Isobel moaned in fear. The feral pleasure in his voice sickened Rose, but she swallowed down the bile in her throat and forced out the next question. "All right, so the body's human. But what about you, the thing inside?"

"So far from home," he said, emphasizing each word.

"If you want to get back home, we can help," Rose said in a rush, her heart racing. _If he just wants to go home, maybe I can talk him out of whatever he's got planned…_

He still didn't move from his spot, a raised eyebrow his only physical reaction to Rose's question. "Why would I leave this place? A world of industry, of workforce and warfare. I could turn it to such purpose."

Rose forgot about helping the creature when she heard the implicit threat in his words. Standing as tall as she could, she stared the creature down. "How would you do that?" she asked, trying to keep the breathless fear out of her voice.

"I would migrate to the Holy Monarch," he said, with that air of satisfaction once again.

"You mean Queen Victoria?" Rose asked, trying to follow his logic.

He bared his teeth. "With one bite, I would pass into her blood, and then it begins. The Empire of the Wolf." The malice in his voice shook Rose, but she didn't have a chance to respond. "You have many questions."

Before she could form a reply, the creature lunged at the cage. Even as Rose jumped back, something inside her wanted to meet the wolf head on. His already unnatural eyes widened even farther. "Look. Inside your eyes. You've seen it too."

"Seen what?"

"The Wolf. There is something of the Wolf about you."

Bits of dreams suddenly flashed through Rose's memory, dreams of herself standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, surrounded by a golden light. She saw Daleks and her first Doctor, and heard herself say, "I am the Bad Wolf…"

"I don't know what you mean," she said half-truthfully.

"You burn like the sun, but all I require is the moon," he growled.

_You burn like the sun… _The remembered dream was clearer now, and she could hear the terror and awe in her Doctor's voice as he said, "You're going to burn!"

Moonlight poured into the room from the overhead window, and the creature turned his face toward it. Rose watched in horror as he turned from a human into a werewolf. Dreams and memories faded from her mind in the pressing need to escape.

Twelve hours later, having defeated the werewolf and been knighted (and banished), Rose and the Doctor jumped off the back of a wagon and started up the hill toward the TARDIS. "No, but the funny thing is, Queen Victoria did actually suffer a mutation of the blood," he said, his arm brushing against hers as they walked. "It's historical record. She was haemophiliac. They used to call it the Royal Disease. But it's always been a mystery because she didn't inherit it. Her mum didn't have it, her dad didn't have it. It came from nowhere."

"What, and you're saying that's a wolf bite?" Rose asked skeptically, squinting up at him.

A flash of gold filled Rose's vision when she accidentally stared right into the sun. _You burn like the sun… _She shook her head and the spots disappeared.

"You all right, Rose?"

"Yeah, fine. Just got the sun in my eyes is all." He raised an eyebrow, but she shook her head and pointed up the hill. "Race you to the TARDIS?"

The Doctor took off running before Rose had the sentence out of her mouth, and she looked back at the sun before chasing after him. _I am the Bad Wolf…_


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I forgot to thank my betas last time-Unabashed Bird, ascballerina, and rudennotgingr. Thank you for your help making this story the best it could be.

And now, the Doctor and Rose take their first steps into learning what he meant when he said, "There's something of the Wolf about you..."

The Doctor spun around the console as Rose closed the door behind her. "Took you long enough, slowpoke," he teased. "I think that means I get to choose our next destination."

When Rose didn't come back with a quick retort, he glanced up at her and frowned; she was twisting her hair around her finger. He'd always been aware of Rose's non-verbal tells; he'd become as fluent in them as he was in English. Twisting her hair around her finger? That was sign #52 that something was bothering her.

He walked around to her side of the console and leaned against the railing. "Rose? Are you all right?"

She sighed and dropped the strand of hair. _(Sighing: Sign #34.)_ "Yeah… s'just, the werewolf… he said something to me, Doctor. Before he went all… all wolf-like."

The Doctor's stomach tightened. He'd tried to forget Rose had been locked in the same room with the monster. "Not technically a werewolf, a lupine wavelength haemovariform. A creature capable of taking two different forms. On his home planet, he could probably go between the two at will; I wonder what it is about Earth that bound him to his humanoid form until the full moon?"

"Whatever." _(Too distracted to call him on his rudeness: Sign #73.)_ Rose looked up at him, the light from the Time Rotor turning her hair green. "He looked me right in the eye and said, "You have something of the Wolf about you…"

The Doctor froze for a split second, then darted back to the console, quickly pulling a few levers in a sequence that would do absolutely nothing but make him look busy. "Something of the wolf?" he repeated, purposely ignoring the capital W he had heard in Rose's inflection. "I wonder what would make him say that."

His fingers froze on the radio dial when he felt her sidle up behind him. "I've been having these dreams, Doctor. Or memories, I don't know. It's like—like an out of body experience or something."

He faced her, a manic grin on his face. "Oh, you never want to have those, Rose. Trust me, make sure you stay totally inside your body at all times."

"Doctor! Stop interrupting."

(Eyes snapping with brown fire: Sign #97, and the one he admired but never, ever ignored. Lesson learnt the hard way: Tyler women can slap.)

He swallowed. "Right. Sorry." Rose raised an eyebrow, and he held up his hands. "Scout's honour. Not that I was ever a Scout, but… finish your story."

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "And in these… dreams, I hear myself sayin', 'I am the Bad Wolf. I—'"

"I create myself," he said, finishing the sentence he'd hoped never to hear again.

She sucked in a deep breath. "So, not dreams then."

"Not dreams." He kept his voice light, but inside his chest, his two hearts pounded furiously. _If she remembers that much, what else does she remember? _

"Right." Rose wrapped her arms around herself and paced a little in front of the jump seat.

Fear heightened the Doctor's already acute senses; he could hear her increased heart rate and see the slight dilation of her eyes as she tried to process what he'd told her. "So, what exactly do you remember?" he asked, aiming for a casual tone.

Rose gnawed on her lip and continued to pace. The Doctor shifted his weight from one foot to the other, unable to settle into a comfortable stance while he waited for her to answer.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You're worried."

The Doctor had to swallow a few times before he could reply. "Worried, me?" She snorted in disbelief. "Nah… a little concerned, maybe," he amended. "After all, I thought I took the Vortex out of you. You didn't remember anything that had happened when you woke up in the TARDIS."

"Right before you regenerated you mean." Her cheeks drained of all colour and she slapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh god, you regenerated because of me! I killed you!" She stepped forward and placed her hands over his hearts.

It took him a moment to follow the swift change in topic, and when he'd caught up, Rose was looking up at him with glassy eyes. He took in her appearance and processed what she'd said. _"I killed you…"_

The obvious answer leapt to the Doctor's tongue—that dying for her had been more than worth it, if it meant he could save her life. He stopped himself just in time, masking the emotion with a cheeky smile. "Ah, well. It seemed only fair, really. You were dying to save me, and of the two of us, I was the one who had the ability to regenerate. Better for me to die once than for you to die forever."

"Yeah?" She took a step back and clasped her hands in front of her.

"Promise." He wagged a finger in front of her face. "But you're changing the subject, Rose Tyler. You were going to tell me what you remember."

Rose rolled her shoulders and squinted up at him. "Like I said, it doesn't feel like a memory. It's like I'm watching myself do things without remembering actually doing them."

"Roooooose, you're not cooperating!"

"Well maybe if you told me what answer you're looking for, I could be more specific," she snapped.

He shoved his hands into his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "If I tell you, then you might remember what I don't want you remembering and then where would we be, hmmm?"

Rose's gaze turned toward the ceiling, her chest slowly expanding as she took a deep breath. "You can be a right git sometimes, you know that?" she said, glaring at him.

"Rude and not ginger, remember? But good manners won't tell me if your mind is going to burn as memories I suppressed leak out!"

He snapped his mouth shut, but judging by Rose's wide eyes, it was too late. "Doctor, what aren't you telling me?"

The Doctor closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. A moment later he felt her soft hand brush some hair out of his face, and he went completely still, taking a deep breath in an attempt to regain some equilibrium.

"Hey, calm down," she said quietly, stroking from his temple down to his jaw.

His eyes opened wide at the contact. "Rose…"

Rose looked up at him through her lashes. "If I can't tell you, maybe there's another way."

"I'm not sure—"

"You're telepathic, yeah? So maybe… you could just look? See if everything is still okay?"

The Doctor's heart leapt into his throat. It wasn't that he didn't like the idea. He'd been in Rose's mind once before, when he'd taken the Vortex out of her, and he could still remember how clean and beautiful her mind had felt against his. But Rose had always seemed to guard herself fiercely against telepathic contact. "Rose… do you know what you're asking?"

She tugged at a loose thread dangling from the hem of her dungarees. "I think so. But maybe… tell me?"

The TARDIS was humming, urging him to go into Rose's mind, but he needed to know she understood first. "Telepathy is more than just reading thoughts, Rose. If I go in your mind, I can't promise I won't see… more."

Her brow furrowed. "More like what?"

"More like… latent feelings. Stray memories. You're not a trained telepath, you won't have mental barriers to keep me out of places you don't want me to be. I can explain the rudiments of it—"

"So explain, Doctor. Don't treat me like an idiot."

"You're not an idiot Rose, but this…" Rose arched a brow. "Fine. Just…" He sought for a way to explain it to someone who'd never had any telepathic experience before. "Imagine your mind is a corridor. Any thoughts you don't want me to see, close inside a room and lock the door. Leave the door to what you remember of Bad Wolf open."

Rose tilted her head. "What if there're other things I don't care about you seeing?"

The Doctor swallowed hard. "Let's focus on the issue at hand," he suggested, trying valiantly to ignore the implications of her invitation, wondering if she realised the intimacy she'd offered so artlessly. "Figure out these memories first, hmmm?"

Rose closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. He waited a moment, his hand hovering beside her temple. "Ready?" he said when her expression cleared.

"Ready."

He paused for one more moment. "Last chance to change your mind," he said, his fingers brushing her hair.

"Doctor! Just do it already." The firmness of that command overcame his hesitation, and his fingertips made contact with the sensitive skin above her temple.

Instantly, he was surrounded by the familiar, comfortable golden-pink light he remembered from the last time he'd been in her mind. A few stray thoughts floated around him, mostly childhood memories, but there was also a current of worry that glowed a brighter red-gold.

_You acted like you weren't at all concerned, _he told her, and he knew she could feel his own surprise.

_What did you expect? _she asked_. You told me the memories could kill me—yeah, I'm afraid._

_Well let's find out, shall we? _He took her hand, and the streaks of red softened to a bright pink.

The corridor stretched out in front of him. Vague sensory details seeped out from behind the locked doors, like the smell of motor oil or the sound of raised voices, but he ignored it as best he could.

There was a door flung wide open, and he paused for a minute, thinking this must be the Game Station. Instead, he saw himself with his daft old face grab Rose's hand and whisper, "Run!"

From that point on, none of the doors were closed. _Didn't seem much point,_ Rose told him. _You lived the rest of it with me, yeah?_

In the console room, the Doctor's fingers trembled on Rose's temples. He'd never been more humbled by Rose's trust in him, and not wanting to violate that by lingering too long, he pressed on quickly down the corridor until he heard the faint echo of himself telling her to have a fantastic life.

Desperation spilled into the corridor, and he finally realised what sending her away had done to her. Rose tugged on his hand, but he lingered in the doorway. It wasn't that he'd thought she'd be glad to get rid of him, but the emotion here…

_Next room,_ _Doctor,_ she told him, pulling more firmly, and they moved on to the next door.

The entire memory was here, playing like a video on a loop. Looking into the TARDIS, flying it back to the Game Station. Opening the door and flooding the room with the golden glow of the Vortex. Killing the Daleks.

He noted with some relief that the memory played like a video shot by a third person, so she didn't remember what had happened to Jack. Aside from the fact that he didn't want her feeling guilty over what had been so very, very human, he really didn't want to explain why he'd left their friend behind on the Game Station.

And though she watched herself absorb the Vortex and fly the TARDIS, the details of both experiences seemed to be hazy, almost erased. The memories were there, but they were damaged enough that they would never come into focus.

The Doctor watched his Ninth self finally give into months of repressed desire and kiss Rose Tyler. To his surprise, her memory ended there, rather abruptly. He knew she had been unconscious when he'd picked her up and carried her into the TARDIS, but losing consciousness usually resulted in memories that faded out of focus, not an abrupt end.

_Something the matter, Doctor?_

_I'm not sure, Rose, I just…_ The whole thing felt off to him somehow. He left the room with her memories of the Game Station and looked up and down the corridor. Farther down, gold light shone around the door he had created and sealed himself, and an idea came to him.

_All right Rose, I'm going to break our telepathic contact in a minute,_ he told her, not wanting her to be surprised when he suddenly left her mind. He felt her consent, and a moment later, they were back in the console room.

Rose swayed a little on her feet, disoriented by the sudden empty feeling in her mind. Once she caught her balance, she looked for the Doctor and spotted him leaning against the console with his hands shoved into his hair.

Fear spiked through her. "All right, spit it out. Am I going to die? No," she answered her own question, "you'd be more upset if that was it. So what's wrong?"

"I don't know! There's a way I could find out, but…" He looked her in the eye. "Rose, do you trust me?"

"Yes."

He cleared his throat. "Right. Good. There's nothing dangerous in your conscious memory. Like you said, it's more like a film reel, showing you scenes from the Game Station. What concerns me is how abruptly it ends—like the film is just flapping off the end of the reel as it spins round and round."

"How is that bad? Isn't it a good thing that the memory ends?"

"I don't know, Rose! And the only way to find out is to look inside the room where I locked away everything that happened to you when you were Bad Wolf."

Rose blinked. "I thought I already remembered that."

"You know what happened," he corrected. "Like… Oh, I know. Like when your mum has told you about something you did as a kid so many times that it's like you remember it, but what you're really remembering is her telling you the story."

Rose nodded; that explained why the dream felt like it was happening to someone else. "And the actual memories are locked away?"

"Should be."

"Memories of seeing all that is, all that was, all that ever could be?" she asked, quoting herself.

"Yep."

"Not something a human mind should see," she pointed out.

The Doctor looked away. "Which is why I want you to be asleep before I open the door," he said, bracing for an argument.

"All right then."

"What? Just like that, you're fine with the idea?"

Rose shrugged. "Privacy seems like a silly concern compared to the possibility of my brain melting, Doctor." He swallowed hard, and she regretted her blunt phrasing.

"That's… that's a very good point." The Doctor raised his hands to her temples, but she took a quick step back. "What's wrong? I thought—"

She rolled her eyes and grabbed his hand, leading him out of the console room. "We're going to the library, and I'm going to lie down on the sofa. I don't care to sleep on the grating, thanks."

"Ah, right_." The Doctor could feel his palms sweating as he followed Rose out of the console room. With every time he connected his mind to Rose's, it became harder not to press for more. But he wouldn't leave Rose in danger just to make himself more comfortable.

Rose reclined on the couch and he knelt next to her, his hands by her temples once more. "Ready?" he asked. When she nodded, he entered her mind and slowly eased her to sleep, pushing just right so her brain waves lengthened into delta waves.

The tone of Rose's telepathic presence changed, and he knew she was in a deep enough state of sleep to not be aware of anything he did. Drawing a deep breath, he walked quickly down the hall of her memories until he was outside the Bad Wolf room. With a trembling hand, he turned the knob and pushed the door open.

Golden light flooded the corridor, and when it faded, he saw a large wolf pacing the floor in front of a fireplace. _You've waited long enough to come see me, Time Lord._

The Doctor shoved his hands his pockets. _I didn't know there was anything to see; I thought I'd taken care of this on the Game Station._

_Then let me show you what Rose cannot remember._

Once again, he saw himself kiss Rose. Then, as he laid her down on the floor, he noticed something he had failed to catch the first time around.

Rose wasn't breathing.

The Doctor's hearts stopped, and he stumbled over to an arm chair and sat down.

_I am curious, Time Lord. You were the one who lowered her body to the floor. How did you fail to notice that she had died?_

_I was dying myself,_ he defended hotly.

_And it didn't occur to you that if the Vortex had killed you after only a minute, it must have killed a mere human? Rose Tyler held the Vortex within her for at least ten times the length of time you did._

The obviousness of it sank in. Of course the Vortex killed Rose. How could he have missed it? He groaned and tipped his head back, staring up at the blue ceiling.

_Who are you?_

_I am the Bad Wolf. I create myself, and I cannot be uncreated._

The Doctor's fingers clenched into the arms of the chair. _But Rose can't hold the Vortex again. It killed her once._

_And I brought her back._

The truth slammed into the Doctor. The only power that could pull a creature back from death was Time. Even a Time Lord's regenerations derived from a biological connection to Time.

As Bad Wolf, Rose had held all of Time inside her, and Time had saved Rose.

_But why?_

The wolf flicked its tail, the hair on its back standing up. _Are you not grateful, Time Lord? _it growled.

The Doctor held his hands up. _Grateful that you saved her, of course. But confused as to why… why you allowed Rose to come for me in the first place._

_I wanted you safe, my Doctor._

Even though he'd never talked to the TARDIS with actual words, he recognised her voice speaking through the Wolf. The familiarity gave him permission to vent his anger. _And I wanted Rose safe. You brought her back to me, and that nearly killed her._

The Doctor's quicksilver mind leapt to a new conclusion. _How long had you been planning this? _He asked. _Is that why you made sure Rose saw your heart open in Cardiff, so she would know to do it herself_?_

The affirmative was clear, and he jumped to his feet and started pacing. _You risked her life—you stole her right to choose._

_No. The moment we met Rose, I knew what her choice would be. I simply gave her the ability to take it. When you sent her away, my Doctor, do you know how long it took before she started looking for a way back, a way to save you?_

He hadn't expected that question. _How long?_

_Two hours. I waited, and I watched. If she had been willing to walk away from you, I would not have shown her the way back to you. But she refused to give up on you, so I took the words and scattered them as a sign to lead her back to you. She was always going to choose saving you._

The Doctor tamped down his resentment long enough to focus on the reason he was here. _And Rose is safe now? The Vortex is gone—the memories she has won't hurt her?_

_Rose is safe,_ the Wolf confirmed. _Anything that could have harmed her is gone. And now I think it is time you let her wake up and told her what you have learned._

The Doctor removed his hands from Rose's temples and stretched his legs out of their cramped position. He turned over what the Wolf had told him, trying to decide how much to tell Rose.

Despite the circumstances, going into Rose's mind had eased the emptiness of his own, and he couldn't bring himself to regret that. After living over 900 years in constant awareness of every Time Lord, being alone had left a hole in his mind that she filled with ease.

He shook Rose by the shoulder, watching as she blinked back to wakefulness. Something else caught his attention though—a muted pink and gold hovering almost unnoticed along the edge of his consciousness that slowly brightened as Rose woke up.


	3. Chapter 3

_Continued thanks to Unabashed Bird, ascballerina, and rudennotgingr for their beta support._

Rose burrowed into the couch, resisting the tug of consciousness. In her dreams, she'd heard the most beautiful song, and she didn't want it to end. She blinked once, then realised the song was still there, humming quietly in the back of her mind. Giving up on sleep, she yawned and opened her eyes.

"Where's the music coming from?" she asked, rolling over to look at the Doctor.

The Doctor sat with his back against the sofa and his knees bent in front of him. His head was bowed, resting on his hands. "Doctor? What's wrong?" She turned her thoughts inward and looked for the part of her mind that must be melting, but there was nothing—nothing but the song.

Rose thwacked him lightly on the back of his head. "What'd you have to go scarin' me for?" she muttered.

"What? Oh, you thought… No, your mind is fine." He rubbed at his face and jumped to his feet. "Well, where should we go now, Rose? We've done werewolves, what about selkies? Seal-like creatures that take the form of a human man and can seduce any female." He wrinkled his nose. "On second thought, no selkies."

"Doctor." Rose stood up and moved in front of him, so she could see his face for the first time since she'd woken up. He only met her gaze for a heartbeat before his eyes started flicking around the room. "What did you find?"

"Oh, nothing you need to worry about. Now, I was thinking…"

Rose pressed her hand to his chest and gently pushed, not stopping until the back of his legs hit the couch. "Sit down," she ordered. "Now look at me." She waited until his eyes finally met hers. "Tell me what happened."

He dropped his head to the back of the couch. "Any chance you'll let this go?"

"Not bloody likely. It's my mind, Doctor." She bit her lip. "Let's start at the beginning, yeah? How did that creature know about Bad Wolf?"

The Doctor reached up to his neck, then realised he wasn't wearing a tie and let his hand fall back to the couch. "He was probably slightly telepathic."

"Okay, so now tell me—" Rose paused; he'd never answered her first question. "Doctor, where's the music coming from?"

He ruffled his hair until it was a wild mess. "Bloody interfering ship," he muttered.

Rose blinked. "What's the TARDIS got to do with this?"

He snorted. "Everything. She knew what you'd do to save me, and she knew what it would do to you, and she still let it happen."

"Stop talking in riddles, Doctor. Give me one straight answer—just one. What's the music?"

"The TARDIS."

Rose remembered the song now; she'd heard it all around her when she'd opened the heart of the TARDIS. "Okay, so why am I hearing it?"

"Wellllll…" His knee bounced in an erratic rhythm. "Before I tell you, promise me you'll remember this was all her doing. I had nothing to do with it. In fact, if I had my way…"

The song in Rose's head—the voice of the TARDIS, she corrected—shifted from a pleasant hum to something like an exasperated sigh. "Just tell me, Doctor."

His Adam's apple bobbed. "See, you and the TARDIS worked together to save my life. You and her, together, were Bad Wolf. And the TARDIS is a sentient, telepathic being."

"I know all that already, Doctor."

"Right. Well, true telepathy isn't something most humans have the capacity for. Your frontal lobe isn't developed enough to handle the mental load."

"But she translates for me. Isn't that telepathy?"

He shook his head. "The translation matrix is one way communication, with the TARDIS essentially putting words into your head. And when I was in your mind earlier, I initiated and directed the exchange. You weren't able to get back into my head."

"Go on then."

"But the TARDIS, she only communicates telepathically. So when you were Bad Wolf, together, she—or maybe the two of you, using the Vortex—strengthened those neural pathways. That's how she could tell you how to fly her."

Rose connected the dots. "The hum is the TARDIS."

"Yep."

"I can hear a ship that only communicates telepathically."

"Yep."

"Doctor, am I telepathic?"

"You are now, thanks to my interfering ship."

"But Bad Wolf—I mean the Game Station—that was weeks ago. Why now?" Rose felt the hum shift slightly, as if it were trying to tell her something. A hazy image of her dream came to her. "There was a golden light before the song."

The Doctor groaned and rubbed his hands over his face. "The light from the Bad Wolf room."

His fingers tapped a quick beat on the cushion, and Rose grabbed his hand. "That room was where you locked away all the Bad Wolf changes, yeah?"

"Right. And I thought… I should have… you were asleep. I should have been able to open that door without you remembering anything. I thought it was safe, or I never would have…" He ground the heels of his hands into his eyes. "I am so, so sorry," he muttered. "So sorry."

"What for?"

His left eyebrow shot up to his hairline. "Rose, you were angry when you found out the TARDIS was in your head. Now I've told you you're telepathic, and you want to know why I'm apologising?"

"Don't remind me, please," Rose groaned. "I barely knew you, and you told me your ship had been messing around in my head_._"

Rose paused. In addition to the song, there was something else in her mind, something that felt like… like comfort and home. "I can feel you," she said. "You're in my head."

"I promise I'm not looking at any thoughts," he said on a rush. "I mean, I can get the general drift of what you're feeling, but to really know what you're thinking, I'd have to be touching you," he said, wiggling his fingers at her.

"I wasn't worried about that. I trust you."

Rose's mobile interrupted whatever the Doctor might have said. She fumbled in the pocket of her dungarees and pulled it out, glancing at the display as she hit send. "Hi Mickey." The Doctor pulled his hand away and crossed his arms over his chest.

"Hey babe, I've found something I think you and the Doctor might be interested in."

"Yeah? What is it?" Rose looked at the Doctor. "Here, let me put you on speaker."

"Well if it isn't Ricky the Idiot," the Doctor grumbled.

"I don' like talking to you either, Doctor," Mickey retorted.

"Right you two," Rose cut in. "Mickey, you said you'd found something we'd be interested in."

The Doctor snorted.

"I heard that," Mickey said, "but to prove I'm the better man, I'm going to ignore it and tell you what I've discovered. About three months ago, there was all this UFO activity, see?" His words sped up until they were nearly running together. "And right around the same time, one of the local schools suddenly started scoring off the charts in the tests."

Rose grinned when the Doctor leaned forward a little. He'd probably never admit as much to Mickey, but she knew his attention was caught. "What's the date, Mickey?" she asked as she and the Doctor walked back to the console room.

The Doctor set the coordinates as Mickey rattled off the date. "See you in five minutes, Mickey!" he said.

After cutting the connection, Rose looked up at the Doctor. He was only on the other side of the console, but it suddenly felt like he was a whole world away. There were dozens of questions she still wanted to ask: what kind of telepathic abilities would she have, what did this mean for them, what else had he learned when he'd been in her mind? But judging from the manic grin he shot her, he was content to pretend the entire encounter had never happened.

"I'm just gonna go…" she pointed toward her room and then down at her clothes. "This might not be 'naked' in London like it was in 19th century Scotland, but I don't think it's appropriate for a school investigation, yeah? I'll be right back."

She had one foot in the corridor when a new thought struck her. "Can you feel me?" she asked.

His eyes flicked up to hers and then back to the display. "Oh yes," he breathed.

She remembered the pain on his face when he'd told her he'd feel Time Lords in his head, if there were any left. "You're not alone in there anymore, yeah?"

A flutter of happiness spread through her mind, and she sucked in a breath. "You felt that?" he asked, and she nodded. "I'm not alone anymore."

"That's good, yeah?"

Something shifted in his expression, and the happiness she'd sensed a moment ago disappeared. "Hurry up and get changed, Rose," he said, still grinning. "Time and aliens wait for no man."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Doctor grinned cheekily at Rose as he passed through the lunch line. This was what he liked best, him and Rose, out investigating curious and unexplainable happenings, although judging by her glare, she didn't much care for her part in their cover. He winked as she dumped some unidentifiable side dish on his tray, and then found a table, confident she'd follow as soon as she could.

Sure enough, a moment later, she sat down beside him, a dish cloth in hand. "Two days," she muttered as she wiped ineffectually at the table.

Feeling puckish, he gestured at the table with his fork. "Sorry, could you just… there's a bit of gravy." She swiped at the table, missing the brown blob entirely. "No, no, just there."

Rose huffed out a breath. "Two days we've been here."

The Doctor shrugged. "Blame your boyfriend. He's the one who put us onto this. And he was right. Boy in class this morning, got a knowledge way beyond planet Earth."

"You eating those chips?" Rose asked, snagging one before he could answer.

He swallowed hard. The look on Rose's face as she bit into the chip made it hard for him to concentrate on anything else. "Yeah… they're a bit different," he said, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest.

"I think they're gorgeous. Wish I had school dinners like this," she said on a happy sigh.

_Right! Time to change the topic from the Chips of Doom._

"It's very well behaved, this place." She hummed her agreement, and the sound did nothing to help his concentration.

He rocked his chair onto the back two legs, looking around the canteen. "I expected happy slapping hoodies. Happy slapping hoodies with ASBOs. Happy slapping hoodies with ASBOs and ringtones. Huh? Huh?" He grinned at her. "Oh, yeah. Don't tell me I don't fit in."

She giggled and ate another chip, but then a shadow fell over their happy conversation—literally. The Doctor turned around and saw the head dinner lady looming over their table. "You are not permitted to leave your station during a sitting," she told Rose.

Rose's chair scraped across the floor. "I was just talkin' to this teacher."

"Hello!" the Doctor said, wiggling his fingers in greeting, but the woman didn't break. In fact, she also didn't blink. _That's interesting…_

"He doesn't like the chips," Rose whispered.

If anything, the woman's expression hardened at that revelation. "The menu has been specifically designed by the headmaster to improve concentration and performance. Now, get back to work."

The Doctor smirked as he watched Rose walk away. "See, this is me," she muttered, twirling around and gesturing at her apron. "Dinner lady."

"I'll have the crumble," he called out, chuckling when he heard her threaten to kill him.

A moment later he choked on his laughter when he felt a wave of indignation roll off her. Even though Rose's presence in his mind filled the void left by the Time Lords, he'd tried to ignore her telepathy—he didn't deserve it, not if she'd had to die for it to happen. But it was going to be hard to ignore if he kept getting little glimpses into what she was thinking or feeling. _Guess I'll have to teach her not to project._

Lunch and chips forgotten, he ambled down to the staff room and found a teacher who wasn't on his suspect list to pry information out of. The conversation with Parsons was just getting interesting when Finch cleared his throat behind them.

"Excuse me, colleagues." The Doctor turned around and his jaw dropped; he would recognise the woman with Finch anywhere, any when. "A moment of your time. May I introduce Miss Sarah Jane Smith. Miss Smith is a journalist who's writing a profile about me for the Sunday Times. I thought it might be useful for her to get a view from the trenches, so to speak. Don't spare my blushes."

Finch left the room, but the Doctor's attention was focused entirely on Sarah Jane, now approaching him directly. "Hello," she said.

The Doctor rocked back on his heels, feeling a soppy grin on his face. "Oh, I should think so," he said, unable to keep his amusement out of his voice.

She looked him up and down, and he recognised the quick cataloging of his appearance. "And, you are?"

"Hm?" _Oh right, new face!_ For a split second, he considered telling her right then and there, but there were too many people within earshot. "Er, Smith. John Smith."

She smiled wistfully. "John Smith. I used to have a friend who sometimes went by that name."

_And how exactly do you respond when you're being compared to yourself?_ "Well, it's a very common name," he said, after floundering a moment.

"He was a very uncommon man," she replied, her voice rich with nostalgia. "Nice to meet you," she added, coming back to the present and offering him a hand to shake.

He took it enthusiastically. "Nice to meet you. Yes, very nice. More than nice. Brilliant."

She cocked her head and looked at him, and he realised with a start that her earlier quick assessment had given way to a keen investigative stare. "Ah, so, have you worked here long?"

"No." He looked around the staff room, trying to appear as if he belonged. "It's only my second day."

Her demeanour softened and he knew what she was thinking. If he'd only been here a few days, then he couldn't be part of whatever was going on. "Oh, you're new, then. So, what do you think of the school?" she asked, stepping closer to lessen the chances of them being overheard. "I mean, this new curriculum? So many children getting ill. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

The Doctor's respiratory bypass kicked in, and he realised he hadn't taken a breath since he'd seen Sarah Jane. "You don't sound like someone just doing a profile," he said conspiratorially, after sucking in a quick breath.

She smiled, but some of the openness disappeared from her expression. "Well, no harm in a little investigation while I'm here."

"No. Good for you." He watched her turn her journalistic instincts on another teacher, and his face split into a wide grin. "Good for you. Oh, good for you, Sarah Jane Smith."

By the time the Doctor had finished his afternoon classes, Sarah Jane was gone. _Not for long though, I bet_, he thought with a grin as he went to meet Rose by the stairwell. They snuck back to the TARDIS to wait while the school emptied of teachers and staff.

Rose sat down on the jump seat and he fiddled with the TARDIS, taking the chance to wipe the console down. "So, you seemed happy earlier this afternoon," she commented after a few minutes of silence.

The Doctor would have brushed it off if she hadn't been idly picking at her nails as she mentioned it. That was Sign #15 under the Take Rose Seriously category.

Still, he wasn't exactly sure what she meant. "Happy? When? If you're talking about the crumble—" She fixed him with a look. "Right. Forget the crumble. But I still don't know what you're talking about Rose, honestly."

"After you left the canteen," she ventured. "I just got… you were suddenly really, really happy."

The Doctor sucked in a deep breath. _Why didn't it occur to me that if she was projecting that strongly, she might be able to receive strong emotions too?_ The simple truth was it had been so long since he'd been around other telepaths, he'd become lax in maintaining his own barriers.

"Guess I need to work harder to keep things to myself," he muttered.

She looked down at the floor, her lips pressed together. "It wasn't… is it rude of me to be asking about this?" she mumbled. "Should I pretend I didn't notice?"

He ran a hand through his hair. "No, Rose. It's rude to go prying, but this was my fault for letting that slip through." He grinned a little. "Besides, this isn't anything too personal to share."

"So what was it?" she asked.

"I ran into an old friend, one I haven't seen in a very, very long time."

"Didn't know you had old friends."

He raised an eyebrow. "Did you think I'd just traveled alone for a thousand years?"

"A thousand? Last time it was 900."

"Not the point," he said, sidestepping the question of his age.

She bit her lip. "Never really thought about it I guess."

"I have a feeling we'll run into her tonight. She's investigating the school too, and if I know Sarah Jane, she won't be content to do so when it's open."

He grabbed his coat from where he'd tossed it earlier. "Speaking of, we should be safe to head back out there. Mickey's probably waiting for us to let him in. Don't want anyone catching sight of him." He held open the TARDIS door and they walked quickly down the stairs to the main floor of the school. "Your boyfriend isn't exactly the most stealthy of individuals."

"He's not my boyfriend, Doctor," she told him just before they reached the doors.

"No?" he asked, carefully keeping his grin in check. When she hadn't corrected him earlier, he'd wondered if their on-again off-again relationship had switched back to on. Mickey appeared before she could answer, so she simply shook her head.

The Doctor bounced lightly on his toes and let Mickey into the school. "Follow me," he said and led them back to the main stairway.

The silent halls creeped Rose out a little bit. "Oh, it's weird seeing school at night. Just sort of… wrong." She ducked around a pillar, coming out into the opening by the main stairwell. "When I was a kid, I used to think all the teachers slept in school."

The Doctor moved into the moonlight. "Hiya, team." He paused. "Oh, I hate people who say team. Ah, gang. Um, comrades."

Rose stifled a giggle, and from the sidelong glance the Doctor shot her, he'd picked up on her amusement. _Thought he was going to put up barriers, _she wondered while she attempted to fasten her watch.

He kept talking, and she brushed the question aside for now. "Uh, anyway. Rose, go to the kitchen. Get a sample of that oil. Mickey, the new staff are all maths teachers. Go and check out the maths department. I'm going to look in Finch's office. Be back here in ten minutes," he ordered as he darted up the stairs

"You going to be all right?" Rose asked Mickey. The clasp on her watch finally worked, and she looked over at him.

"Me? Please," he said, rocking back on his heels. "Infiltration and investigation? I'm an expert at this."

Rose watched him walk down the hall in the wrong direction, waiting for him to admit he needed her help. Not even a minute later, he was back. "Where's the Maths department?"

Biting the inside of her lip to keep from laughing, she leaned closer and pointed where he needed to go. "Down there, turn left, through the fire doors, on the right," she said, keeping her voice down in case anyone else happened to still be in the building.

"Thank you," Mickey said, and they parted ways.

Alone again, Rose's mind drifted as she followed the familiar path to the kitchen. _Why hasn't the Doctor put up those barriers? He wasn't too fussed that I'd picked up on his feelings earlier, but I bet that won't last long._

She pushed open the kitchen doors, blinking a little in the light, and crossed to the barrels. Her mind continued to work as she filled the vial the Doctor had given her with the oil. Something about hearing him talking about old friends had unsettled her—not because he shouldn't have old friends, that made sense once he'd pointed out his age.

But… Rose bit her lip. _But he's got friends, and he never talks about them. Does he ever visit them, or does he just leave them behind?_ The possibility of being abandoned left a hollow feeling in the bit of her stomach. He'd already tried to send her back once; what if he did it again?

Mickey's scream interrupted her thoughts, and for a while, her misgivings were shoved to the side.

The Doctor smirked when he overheard Rose telling Mickey which way to go. At the top of the steps, a sound distracted him from his destination: fluttering, and the sound of footsteps coming faster toward him. Instead of going to Finch's office, he did an about-face and followed the sound in the direction of the storeroom where he'd hidden the TARDIS.

The Doctor watched from the shadows as Sarah Jane entered the same room a moment later, her hand on her chest. This wasn't how he'd planned to tell her who he was—he hadn't even fully decided if he should. But he knew that once she saw that beautiful blue box she'd know, because that couldn't belong to anyone else.

A moment later, she backed out of the room, nearly stumbling over her feet before she slowly turned toward him. "Hello, Sarah Jane."

She gave a little sound that was half laugh, half sob. "It's you. Oh, Doctor. Oh, my God, it's you, isn't it?" She reached out a hand and then dropped it. "You've regenerated."

"Yeah, oh…" He counted to himself. "Half a dozen times since we last met."

The shock and wonder he'd felt when seeing her that afternoon were painted on her face. "You look incredible."

"So do you," he said, meaning every word. She looked confident, like she'd made herself a place in the world and knew exactly who she was supposed to be.

But she shook her head. "I got old."

He was grateful the dimly lit hallway hid the shiver that ran through him. The frailty of human life astounded and terrified him. He always tried to leave his friends before he could see them die, but sometimes… He pictured Rose on the floor of the Game Station, and fear twisted in his stomach.

"What are you doing here?" she asked.

He blinked and brought himself back to the conversation with an effort. "Well, UFO sighting, school gets record results. I couldn't resist. What about you?"

She laughed incredulously. "The same."

She stared at him for a long moment, and then the words just poured out of her, repressed tears putting a tremor in her voice. "I thought you'd died. I waited for you and you didn't come back, and I thought you must have died."

_But you know Time Lords don't age, we don't die… _Loneliness swept over him, and it made his voice curt. "I lived. Everyone else died."

The stark truth seemed to shake her out of her daze. "What do you mean?"

He took a deep breath. "Everyone died, Sarah." _Everyone always dies and leaves me alone._

She closed her eyes, and he could tell the enormity of what he said was too much for her to take in. "I can't believe it's you." Before he could respond to that, Mickey screamed and Sarah Jane grinned. "Okay, now I can!"

They raced down the hallway together, meeting Rose halfway. "Did you hear that?" She glanced at Sarah Jane. "You must be Sarah Jane; I'm Rose."

Sarah Jane smiled suddenly. "At least you didn't forget me entirely," she said.

Timelines shifted just slightly, and the Doctor knew he'd avoided an unpleasant confrontation. He smiled brilliantly at both women. "Right. Let's go see what made Mickey scream, shall we?" he suggested, and they dashed down the stairs together, Rose's hand in his and Sarah Jane right behind them.

They found Mickey bent over, trying to pick up packages that had spilled into the hallway. "Sorry!" he said breathlessly, gathering a few up. "Sorry, it was only me. You told me to investigate, so I started looking through some of these cupboards and all these fell on me."

The Doctor bent over to pick one up, realising what they were at the same time as Rose. "Oh, my God, they're rats," she said. "Dozens of rats. Vacuum packed rats."

A rat in hand, the Doctor stared up at Mickey. "And you decided to scream."

"It took me by surprise!"

"Like a little girl?" he scoffed.

"It was dark! I was covered in rats!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes as Mickey shuddered and ran a hand over his head. "Nine, maybe ten years old," he said. "I'm seeing pigtails, frilly skirt."

"Hello, can we focus?" Rose said. "Does anyone notice anything strange about this? Rats in school?"

"Well, obviously they use them in Biology lessons. They dissect them."

Rose shook her head. "No one dissects rats anymore. There's got to be something else going on."

The Doctor nodded. "Everything started when Mr. Finch arrived. We should go and check his office."

He led the way the headmaster's office and opened the door with the sonic screwdriver. "Maybe those rats were food."

"Food for what?" Rose asked.

The lock popped open and the Doctor opened the door slowly and stuck his head inside. At first glance, the room seemed exactly as it should be, but then he heard something like snoring and looked up. Thirteen bat creatures were hanging from the ceiling.

"Rose, you know you used to think all the teachers slept in the school? Well, they do."

He stepped into the room and let Rose, Sarah Jane, and Mickey peek through the doorway. Mickey ran first with a muttered, "No way!" By the time the others reached the outdoors, he was bent over, gasping for breath. "I am not going back in there. No way."

"Those were teachers," Rose said in disbelief.

The Doctor nodded. "When Finch arrived, he brought with him seven new teachers, four dinner ladies and a nurse. Thirteen. Thirteen big bat people." He spun on his heel, headed back toward the school. "Come on."

"Come on?" Mickey snorted. "You've got to be kidding!"

The Doctor turned around. "I need the TARDIS," he told him impatiently. "I've got to analyse that oil from the kitchen."

"I might be able to help you there," Sarah Jane told him. "I've got something to show you."


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

An hour later, they were all seated together in a cafe, Mickey and Rose chatting while the Doctor fixed K9. "I thought of you on Christmas Day," Sarah Jane told him. "This Christmas just gone? Great big spaceship overhead. I thought, oh yeah, bet he's up there."

The Doctor nodded. "Right on top of it, yeah."

"And Rose?" she asked hesitantly.

The Doctor shot a sidelong glance at her. "She was there too."

Sarah Jane shifted in her seat. "Did I do something wrong, because you never came back for me. You just dumped me."

The question surprised him. "I told you. I was called back home and in those days humans weren't allowed."

"I waited for you. I missed you."

"Oh, you didn't need me. You were getting on with your life."

"You were my life."

The Doctor's mouth dropped open a little. He'd never imagined his companions might resent returning to their old lives. So many had wanted to leave him; he'd always imagined they all did.

She glanced down, her features drawn tight. "You know what the most difficult thing was? Coping with what happens next, or with what doesn't happen next. You took me to the furthest reaches of the galaxy, you showed me supernovas, intergalactic battles, and then you just dropped me back on Earth. How could anything compare to that?"

The hands that had still been working on K-9's wiring stilled. "All those things you saw, you want—do you want me to apologise for that?"

"No, but we get a taste of that splendour and then we have to go back."

"But look at you, you're investigating," he told her, trying to coax a smile from her. "You found that school. You're doing what we always did."

"You could have come back," she insisted.

His smile slipped from his face. "I couldn't."

"Why not?"

That simple question stripped all of his defences. He had abandoned Sarah, and they both knew it. He'd taken advantage of a situation to leave her behind, not wanting to face losing her one day. And now, in her bereft expression, he saw exactly what his abandonment did to his friends.

He pushed his guilt aside and focused his attention again on repairing K9. Even if Sarah Jane hadn't wanted to return to Earth, it had been the best choice for her.

"It wasn't Croydon," she told him a moment later. "Where you dropped me off, that wasn't Croydon."

He blinked. "Where was it?"

"Aberdeen."

"Right. That's next to Croydon, isn't it?" Relatively speaking at least—he'd managed to get her in the right country at the right time.

She let out a half laugh and shook her head, but K9 flashed to life before she could reply. "Oh, hey! Now we're in business!" the Doctor crowed, jumping to his feet.

"Master?" K9 said, wagging his tail.

"He recognises me," the Doctor said, surprised at how happy that made him.

"Affirmative," the metal dog said.

The Doctor held out a hand. "Rose, give me the oil."

Rose and Mickey left their cozy booth and chips and she handed him the vial. "I wouldn't touch it, though," she warned him as he unscrewed the lid. "That dinner lady got all scorched."

The Doctor scoffed at the warning. "I'm no dinner lady. And I don'—t often say that." He smeared some on K9's probe. "Here we go. Come on boy, here we go."

The little dog's lights glowed. "Oil. Ex ex ex extract. Ana ana analysing."

Mickey chortled. "Listen to him, man. That's a voice."

"Careful, that's my dog," Sarah Jane protested, and the Doctor felt another spike of guilt, this time that he'd left her alone with no one but a metal dog who could truly understand her.

"Confirmation of analysis. Substance is Krillitane Oil."

The Doctor sucked in a breath. "They're Krillitanes."

Rose bit her lip. "That's bad," she stated, and he wondered if she'd picked up on his unease. "How bad is that, exactly?" she asked.

"Very. Think of how bad things could possibly be, and add another suitcase full of bad."

"And what are Krillitanes?" Sarah Jane asked.

He shoved the bad into one corner of his mind and went into lecture mode. "They're a composite race. Just like your culture is a mixture of traditions from all sorts of countries, people you've invaded or have been invaded by." The rest of his explanation tumbled out of his mouth at a faster pace. "You've got bits of Viking, bits of France, bits of whatever. The Krillitanes are the same. An amalgam of the races they've conquered."

From the look on his companions' faces, he could tell they didn't see yet why this was so bad. "But they take physical aspects as well. They cherry pick the best bits from the people they destroy. That's why I didn't recognise them. The last time I saw Krillitanes, they looked just like us except they had really long necks."

"What're they doing here?" Rose asked.

_Krillitane oil. Oil, oil to fry chips. Chips that are part of the specially planned meals that all the students eat._ "It's the children. They're doing something to the children."

"So what are doing standing around here then?" she said, and behind her, Sarah Jane nodded in agreement. "Let's go back to the school and take care of it—if they're doing something to the kids, we have to stop them."

"We will, but not tonight. They know we were there tonight. There's no way we could get into the building tonight, but tomorrow, when school is in session…"

"We can go in through the front doors," Sarah Jane said.

"Hold on." Rose laid a hand on his arm. "The TARDIS is in the school."

The Doctor shrugged. "Assembled hordes of Genghis Khan, remember? It's locked up tight; there's no way they can get in."

He rubbed at the back of his neck. "However, that does leave me without anywhere to go tonight. Think your mum would mind if I kipped on her sofa, maybe watched telly while you sleep?"

Sarah Jane's eyebrows flew up to her hairline. He knew how domestic the request sounded, but it wasn't anything he hadn't done before. He'd spent half the Christmas holidays on Jackie Tyler's sofa, until Rose had been convinced he was well enough to travel again.

"Yeah, s'long as you don't get popcorn in the couch cushions again," Rose said, her tongue showing through her smile.

He grinned back. "I promise."

Sarah Jane cleared her throat. "Mickey, would you mind helping me get K9 back into the car? He's a bit heavy for me to lift by myself."

The two of them managed to get the dog through the door, and the Doctor made to follow. However, Rose caught him by the sleeve as they exited the cafe. "Listen, I heard part of your conversation with Sarah Jane," she said quietly.

"Eavesdropping, Rose? That's not like you."

Annoyance washed over him, but it was Rose's, not his. _As soon as this is done, I've got to teach her how to keep from projecting._

"It's a public place, Doctor, and you weren't trying to keep your voice down or anything," she pointed out.

He huffed out a breath. "Right, sorry."

The annoyance softened into uncertainty. "So… is that what happens then, you let us travel with you for a while and then you just… leave us behind?"

_No. You leave me behind, you all leave me and I'm so all alone…_

Apparently he didn't answer fast enough, because the line of her jaw tightened and her next words came out in a harsher clip. "I mean, is that what you're going to do to me? I'll just wake up one morning and you'll have decided it's time for me to go?"

"No." The denial came from deep inside him. He'd known for months that he'd never let Rose go, not unless she asked. "Not to you."

Rose opened her mouth, closed it, swallowed, and tried again. "But Sarah Jane? You were that close to her once, and now you never even mention her—not until today, when I asked you. Why not?"

The Doctor clenched his jaw and clamped down hard on his own mental barriers. "I don't age. I regenerate. But humans decay." Once again, he saw Rose lying dead after saving his life. All his companions died, but she'd already died, he'd seen it happen—how could he watch that happen again? "You wither, and you die. Imagine watching that happen to someone that you—"

He stopped the word in time, but he could feel her sudden hope and curiosity. "What, Doctor?"

He swallowed hard and gave her the only promise he could. "You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can't spend the rest of mine with you. I have to live on. Alone. That's the curse of the Time Lords."

On the edge of his range of hearing, he heard a whispered voice repeat the word. "Time Lord…"

He looked up, grateful for a distraction from the painful conversation with Rose. A giant bat swooped down, talons outstretched toward Sarah Jane. All four of them ducked back under the eaves of the cafe, and Sarah Jane gasped out, "Was that a Krillitane?"

"But it didn't even touch her," Rose pointed out. "It just flew off. What did it do that for?"

"A warning," the Doctor said grimly. "Come on, let's get some sleep. This ends tomorrow."

DWDWDWDWDWDWDW

Rose punched at her pillow and folded it in half before curling up on her side. _"Imagine that happening to someone you…"_ He'd stopped before he finished the sentence, but Rose had heard the word he'd swallowed back.

It wasn't anything new, not really. But this was the closest he'd come to actually saying something. "I could save the world but lose you," came close, but to barely stop himself from saying he loved her… A shiver ran down her spine. She wondered if he knew she'd picked up on what he wanted to say.

She rolled onto her back with a sigh. The Doctor was being as quiet as he ever was—meaning she could hear the low hum of the telly, interspersed with occasional mutterings from him as he argued with whatever program he was watching.

It wasn't the noise that kept her up though. It was the agitation she could feel buzzing in the back of her mind, agitation that wasn't her own. "Well, if I'm not gonna get any sleep, I might as well go see what's bothering him," she muttered and tossed the covers back.

The cool air hit her bare arms, and she grabbed a hoodie before leaving her room, pulling it on over her vest top. The Doctor looked up as she entered the living room. "Was I too loud?"

"Nah, 'cept in here," she said, tapping the side of her head. She ducked into the bathroom and took a couple paracetamol for the headache that sat behind her eyes before taking a seat beside him.

He frowned. "You shouldn't be hearing anything, Rose—I've put up barriers."

"It's not thoughts," she reassured him. "Just this… buzzing, like I can tell something's bothering you."

He snorted. "Why wouldn't something be bothering me?" he asked. "An unscrupulous alien race is using children for who knows what, and then there's…"

"There's what, Doctor?" she asked when he didn't finish the sentence.

"As long as you're awake, why don't we work on your mental barriers?"

Rose shook her head. That wasn't what he'd been thinking, and she knew it. Still… "So if I'm getting things from you, does that mean you're picking up things from me?

The Doctor sighed. "Yep. I'm being careful not to peek, but sometimes you think _so loud._"

Her cheeks warmed. There were definitely some thoughts she did not want the Doctor to see. "So, barriers. How does that work?"

He was quiet for a few minutes, and Rose took the moment to observe him. She'd always liked watching him think—she could practically see the wheels turning in that giant alien brain of his. But when there was something he was particularly intent on, his eyes half-closed and he'd press his tongue against the back of his teeth. And sometimes he'd put on the brainy specs…

"Ah!" he exclaimed, pulling her out of her reverie before it could become a full-fledged fantasy. "Remember how I told you to imagine doors in your mind, so I could tell what thoughts you wanted me to see?"

"Right."

He turned slightly on the sofa so they were eye to eye. "So, this is basically the same thing. Picture everything that you are, everything that makes you Rose, and put a wall around it."

She closed her eyes and furrowed her brow. "What kind of wall?" she asked quietly.

"Any kind. Just something that you think is, well, impregnable. It can't have any vulnerabilities, or when you put it up, you'll imagine those weak spots too and others will be able to find them."

She opened her eyes just a crack and peeked out at him. "Are you saying I could actually get good enough at this to keep anyone from getting in?"

"Maybe not quite that good," he allowed. "If they're determined enough, there are ways to break you."

The possible danger of telepathy hadn't occurred to Rose before, and nodded firmly. "All right, Doctor," she said, closing her eyes again. "I'm trying to picture the strongest wall I know."

"I'll give it a minute, and then I'll try to peek into your mind. You should feel me, sort of like a mental tap on the shoulder. Don't let it distract you. Let your barriers do their job."

Rose nodded and concentrated on her barriers. A moment later, the presence she'd been aware of from the moment she'd woken up on the TARDIS two days ago shifted to something more insistent that floated round the outside of her consciousness, looking for a way in.

At first, Rose felt like she was doing a pretty good job keeping him out. But he buzzed about her head like an annoying gnat, and the strain of swatting at him constantly wore her out. She felt the moment he penetrated her barriers and opened her eyes with a sigh.

"Hey, don't be so hard on yourself," he said with a smile. "You're learning how to use a brand new muscle; you can't expect to master it overnight."

Rose felt something from him though. "But something's still bothering you. If this was only about practicing, you'd be okay with it. What am I doing wrong?"

He frowned. "That, Rose. That's what's wrong. I couldn't read your mind until your barriers fell, but I still got everything you're feeling. Let's try again. This time, focus on keeping your emotions contained."

She closed her eyes and tried to do what he said, but immediately, the headache she'd been nursing quadrupled in strength. The pain made it impossible to concentrate on anything, and a low moan escaped her lips.

"Rose?"

"My head… s'killing me."

"Right, that's enough of that. I'd forgotten the headaches and nausea that come as you develop your telepathic skills."

This was the first time Rose had experienced it, but she felt too ill to argue with him as he helped her into bed. "We'll work on this again later," he promised her.


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The next morning, the Doctor stood outside the school with Rose, Sarah Jane, and Mickey. Students were already going through the doors, completely unaware that an alien race was using them. His hands clenched and unclenched by his sides, and he laid the plan out for his companions.

"Rose and Sarah, you go to the maths room. Crack open those computers, I need to see the hardware inside. Here, you might need this." He handed the sonic to Sarah Jane.

"Mickey, surveillance. I want you outside."

"Just stand outside?" Mickey protested.

"Here, take these—you can keep K9 company," Sarah suggested, tossing the car keys to Mickey.

"Don't forget to leave the window open a crack," the Doctor said over his shoulder as he started for the door.

"But he's metal!"

"I didn't mean for him."

"What're you going to do?" Rose asked.

"It's time I had a word with Mr. Finch."

But the headmaster wasn't in his office. _Maybe in the teacher's lounge,_ the Doctor thought, taking the stairs two at a time. That room was empty too, so he went back to the staircase. Peering down into the atrium, he spotted Finch, staring up at him. The Krillitane executed a precision turn and walked away slowly.

The Doctor could smell the chlorine before he even opened the red door. Inside, Finch was leaning against the wall on the far side of the pool. "Who are you?" the Doctor asked him.

"My name is Brother Lassa," the Krillitane said, his voice echoing slightly against the walls. "And you?"

"The Doctor. Since when did Krillitanes have wings?"

Finch started pacing along the edge of the pool, and the Doctor mirrored his steps, keeping the same amount of distance between them. "It's been our form for nearly ten generations now. Our ancestors invaded Bessan. The people there had some rather lovely wings. They made a million widows in one day. Just imagine."

The Time Lord and the Krillitane stopped opposite each other at the middle of the pool. "And now you're shaped human."

"A personal favourite, that's all."

"And the others?"

"My brothers remain bat form. What you see is a simple morphic illusion. Scratch the surface and the true Krillitane lies beneath."

_Ah, that's how they're doing it._

"And what of the Time Lords?" Finch asked, moving again toward the top end of the pool. "I always thought of you as such a pompous race. Ancient, dusty senators, so frightened of change and chaos. And of course, they're all but extinct. Only you. The last."

Finch's words were designed to dig, but the thought of the children kept the Doctor focused. He slowly approached Finch, stopping when there was still fifteen feet between them. "This plan of yours. What is it?"

Finch tilted his head again in a vaguely avian manner. "You don't know."

"That's why I'm asking." The Doctor watched warily as Finch slowly closed the distance between them.

"Well, show me how clever you are. Work it out."

Finch stopped only two feet away from the Doctor, and the Doctor met his gaze coolly. "If I don't like it, then it will stop."

"Fascinating," Finch said, tilting and twisting his neck again as he stared at the Doctor. "Your people were peaceful to the point of indolence. You seem to be something new. Would you declare war on us, Doctor?"

"I'm so old now," the Doctor said quietly, letting a hint of the Oncoming Storm show in his eyes. "I used to have so much mercy. You get one warning. That was it."

The Doctor turned his back on the Krillitane, but Finch continued talking to his back as he walked away. "But we're not even enemies. Soon you will embrace us." That stopped the Doctor, and he turned back around. "The next time we meet, you will join with me. I promise you."

Finch walked by him and the Doctor watched him leave the room, wondering at the meaning behind his none too subtle threat. Joining with a Krillitane was not like joining the Army or the Boy Scouts, and yet Finch was certain he'd be willing to do it—or unable to stop it from happening.

DWDWDWDWDW

In the maths classroom, Rose leaned back in her chair, watching Sarah Jane try unsuccessfully to get into one of the computers. "So, what was the strangest thing you saw when you travelled with the Doctor?" she asked, fiddling with the zipper to her hoodie.

"Mummies," Sarah Jane said absently, beating the sonic lightly against her palm. "It's not working."

"Give it to me." Rose took the sonic from her and got down on her hands and knees.

"And you, Rose? Have you seen anything fantastic?" Sarah Jane asked.

Rose remembered a trip to Cardiff at Christmas. "I've met ghosts," she said, finally getting the sonic to work.

"Used to work first time in my day," Sarah Jane muttered.

There was something in her voice that Rose didn't understand. Trying to keep the conversation from veering off too far, she said, "Just mummies, or was there anything else?"

"Robots," she answered. "Lots of robots."

Rose popped back up from under the table to type a command into the keyboard. "Slitheen, in Downing Street."

"Daleks!" Sarah Jane said, and suddenly the conversation felt like two adventurers swapping stories.

"Met the emperor," Rose said with a grin as the computer finally turned on.

"Anti-matter monsters."

"Gas masked zombies."

"Real living dinosaurs."

"Real living werewolf."

"The Loch Ness Monster!" Sarah Jane paused for a moment, and then said, "Rose, can I give you a bit of advice?"

Rose raised an eyebrow. "I've got a feeling you're about to."

"I know how intense a relationship with the Doctor can be, and I don't want you to feel I'm intruding—"

"I don't feel threatened by you, if that's what you mean," Rose interrupted. And it was the truth; if the Doctor hadn't told her about Sarah Jane before they'd met, she might have felt differently, but his point that of course he'd had friends before had made sense.

Sarah Jane blinked. "Right. Good. Because everything we just said, there are only a handful of people on earth who could possibly understand what it's like to live and travel with the Doctor."

Rose brushed her hair behind her ear. "With you, did he do that thing where he'd explain something at like, ninety miles per hour, and you'd go, 'What?' and he'd look at you like you'd just dribbled on your shirt?"

Sarah Jane was nodding before Rose finished her sentence. "All the time." She chuckled. "Does he still stroke bits of the TARDIS?"

"Yeah! Yeah, he does. I'm like, do you two want to be alone?" The last remaining bits of tension dissolved in laughter, and they were still laughing when the Doctor entered the room a moment later.

"How's it going?" he asked, but seeing him when they'd just been talking about him sent them into greater hysterics. "What? Listen, I need to find out what's programmed inside these." Rose and Sarah Jane were nearly doubled over in laughter. " What? Stop it!"

It was the feeling of annoyance, not his words or tone, that broke through to Rose, and she managed to calm down. "Sorry, we were just… sharing stories."

"Fine, but let's save the socialising until after we've saved the children. Did you get into one of the computers?"

Rose opened her mouth to answer, but a buzz over the loudspeaker interrupted her. "All pupils to class immediately," a voice announced. "And would all members of staff please congregate in the staff room."

"It's started," the Doctor said.

The hallway filled with children, and Rose moved to the door. "Sarah Jane, show him where we started. I'll keep everyone out."

The Doctor scanned the room. Rose and Sarah Jane had been gotten one of the computers turned on, but this system ran on a server. To access the program, he'd need to access the server.

He found the server under the teacher's desk at the front of the room, nearly buried beneath a mountain of cables. Quick as a wink, he grabbed them and put them around his neck, then picked the server up and placed it on the desk.

He aimed the sonic at the switch, but the computer stayed in sleep mode. "I can't shift it."

"I thought the sonic screwdriver could open anything!" Sarah Jane protested.

"Anything except a deadlock seal. There's got to be something inside here. What're they teaching those kids?" he muttered as Rose rejoined them.

The three of them stared at the computer for a moment, each trying to come up with another plan. Then, without the Doctor doing anything, alien symbols flashed rapidly across every screen. "You wanted the programme?" Sarah Jane said. "There it is."

The Doctor stared at the green writing. Something about it tickled at the back of his mind, but he couldn't pinpoint what it was. "Some sort of code."

One by one, symbols locked into place, and finally he realised what he was looking at. "No. No, that can't be. The Skasis Paradigm. They're trying to crack the Skasis Paradigm."

"The Skasis what?" Sarah Jane asked.

"The God-maker," he explained. "The universal theory. Crack that equation and you've got control of the building blocks of the universe. Time and space and matter, yours to control."

"What, and the kids are like a giant computer?" Rose asked in disbelief.

"Yes." Another bit of the equation locked into place. "And their learning power is being accelerated by the oil." He paced the room, standing on the other side of a table from Rose and Sarah Jane. "That oil from the kitchens, it works as a, as a conducting agent. Makes the kids cleverer."

"But that oil's on the chips," Rose said. "I've been eating them."

The Doctor leaned over the table. "What's fifty nine times thirty five?"

"Two thousand and sixty five." Her eyes widened. "Oh, my God."

"But why use children?" Sarah Jane asked. "Can't they use adults?"

"No, it's got to be children. The God-maker needs imagination to crack it. They're not just using the children's brains to break the code, they're using their souls."

Behind him, he heard quiet footsteps. "Let the lesson begin," Mr. Finch said. "Think of it, Doctor. With the Paradigm solved, reality becomes clay in our hands. We can shape the universe and improve it."

"Oh yeah? The whole of creation with the face of Mr. Finch? Call me old fashioned, but I like things as they are."

Finch tilted his head. "You act like such a radical, and yet all you want to do is preserve the old order. Think of the changes that could be made if this power was used for good."

Disgust burned in the Doctor's throat. "What, by someone like you?"

"No, someone like you."

The Doctor stared, not comprehending what Finch was saying. The Krillitane was happy to expound on the idea. "The Paradigm gives us power. but you could give us wisdom. Become a god at my side. Imagine what you could do. Think of the civilisations you could save. Perganon, Assinta. Your own people, Doctor, standing tall. The Time Lords reborn."

"Doctor, don't listen to him," Sarah Jane implored.

"And you could be with him throughout eternity." Finch walked around him, and the Doctor turned to watch him talk to Sarah Jane and Rose. "Young, fresh, never wither, never age, never die."

The words hit a chord with the Doctor, and Finch must have known it. "Their lives are so fleeting. So many goodbyes. How lonely you must be, Doctor. Join us."

It was perhaps the greatest temptation he'd ever faced. To not be alone anymore, to have his people back, to never lose another friend to the ravages of time. "I could save everyone."

"Yes."

"I could stop the war." The war that had gone on for so long that by the end, he'd almost forgotten what Gallifrey had been like in a time of peace. The forests on Mount Cadon in ashes, the red grass scorched, and finally, Arcadia falling to the Daleks.

"No." The emotion in Sarah Jane's throat pulled the Doctor away from his imaginings. "The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship, everything has its time. And everything ends."

It was that final acceptance and forgiveness that gave the Doctor the strength to turn his back on this chance to change his past. On the screen behind Finch, symbols were still locking into place. They were so close, so close to the answer, but he couldn't let it happen. No matter what it meant to him.

The Doctor grabbed a chair and threw it at the monitor, so the sight of the program wouldn't taunt him anymore.

"Out!" he yelled at his friends, and the three of them ran out into the corridor ahead of Finch.

"Doctor, what're we gonna do?" Rose asked as they raced down the corridor.

Before he could answer, they heard a loud sound of breaking glass from the main atrium. Looking down the stairs, the Doctor spotted Mickey with a student. He led the way downstairs, and Mickey met them a few seconds later.

"Kenny, the Doctor. Doctor, Kenny," Mickey said. "What is going on?"

Before the Doctor could answer, three Krillitane flew at them. The Doctor grabbed Rose by the arm and led the group down the hall. "Oh, nothing much," the Doctor he told Mickey. "Just, you know, aliens using kids to break the code that would let them control the entire universe."

They burst through the doors into the canteen and raced across the room, but the doors on the other side were locked. The Doctor reached into his coat pocket for the sonic screwdriver just as the Krillitane swept into the room behind them, led by Finch.

"Are they my teachers?" Kenny asked.

"Yeah. I'm sorry." The Doctor scanned the room for something, anything that would detain the Krillitane from following them out of the canteen.

"We need the Doctor alive," Finch said. "As for the others? You can feast."

On this command, the Krillitane swooped down at their heads. Everyone dove out of the way, grabbing chairs or whatever they could find to fend off the bat creatures. _Not enough, not enough. I need a diversion to give me time to get the door open. _

A familiar red laser struck one of the Krillitane in the chest. "K9!" Sarah Jane shouted over Finch's screams of rage.

"Suggest you engage running mode, Mistress," the tin dog said.

The Doctor realised K9 had given them the distraction they needed to escape. "Come on!" He opened the door with the sonic and waited for Rose, Sarah Jane, and Mickey to leave, then called back, "K9, hold them back!"

"Affirmative, Master. Maximum defence mode."

Out in the corridor, the Doctor locked the door again and then raced to the physics classroom. After everyone piled through the door, he locked it and leaned against his desk while they sat at the lab tables. _There must be something we can use against them, some substance that would be toxic to them._

He leaned against his desk and closed his eyes, trying to think. There was something… "It's the oil," he realised. "Krillitane life forms can't handle the oil. That's it! They've changed their physiology so often, even their own oil is toxic to them. How much was there in the kitchens?" he asked Rose.

"Barrels of it."

Claws beat on the classroom door and Krillitanes screeched in fury outside the room. _Right. Time to put this plan into action then._ "Okay, we need to get to the kitchens. Mickey."

"What now, hold the coats?" Mickey groused.

"Get all the children unplugged and out of the school." Mickey nodded. "Now then, bats, bats, bats." He drummed his fingers against his head. "How do we fight bats?"

The fire alarm rang through the hallway, and the Doctor could have kissed Kenny. _Of course! Bats can't stand high pitched noises._ He laughed gleefully and pushed the door open. The Krillitane couldn't do anything to stop them with their hands pressed against their ears in agony, and they all ran past without difficulty.

Mickey broke off first, running toward the classrooms. The Doctor nodded briefly to him as they continued back toward the kitchen.

"Master."

The Doctor paused for a second and patted his dog on the head. "Come on, boy. Good boy."

"The vats are over here," Rose panted as they ran into the kitchen.

The Doctor aimed the sonic at one, then shook his head. "They've been deadlock sealed." He tried another, same result. "Finch must've done that. I can't open them."

"The vats would not withstand a direct hit from my laser, but my batteries are failing," K9 said.

The Doctor's mind worked a mile a minute. K9's idea would work, but it would be dangerous. "Right. Everyone out the back door. K9, stay with me."

Rose looked back over her shoulder at him, and the Doctor felt how much she hated leaving him in danger. He pushed that aside and worked to get the vats organised in the best formation for K9 to shoot.

"Capacity for only one shot, Master," the tin dog said. "For maximum impact, I must be stationed directly beside the vat."

The Doctor crouched down in front of his dog. "But you'll be trapped inside."

"That is correct."

The pragmatism in the dog's voice killed the Doctor. "I can't let you do that."

"No alternative possible, Master."

The faint sounds of the Krillitane getting closer overrode the Doctor's protest. "Goodbye, old friend," he said quietly.

"Goodbye, Master."

"You good dog."

"Affirmative." K9's tail wagged, and the Doctor patted him one last time before jogging out through the back door.

"Where's K9?" Sarah Jane asked as he sonicked the door shut.

"We need to run."

But she wouldn't move. "Where is he? What have you done?"

The Doctor grabbed a still protesting Sarah Jane by the shoulders and pulled her away. After a few steps, habit took over and she started running along with him.

Behind them, he heard the small first explosion that indicated K9 had hit the vats. He grabbed Sarah Jane's hand and urged her to run faster, until they were out of reach of the second, stronger blast he knew would come.

Rose caught his eye over the crowd of students that Mickey had managed to get to safety, and he nodded just before the building exploded. School children jumped up and down in excitement as papers rained down on them like confetti, but beside him, Sarah Jane didn't look like she was celebrating.

"I'm sorry," he told her.

"It's all right. He was just a daft metal dog. It's fine, really." She burst into tears, and he wrapped an arm around her.

The Doctor saw Rose approaching over the top of Sarah's head. She arched an eyebrow in question, and he thought he could almost feel her concern. He nodded just slightly in response, and Rose stopped and leaned against the wall of the school to wait for him.

Sarah Jane pulled back a moment later and wiped at her eyes. "Well, I should be getting home," she said. "Will you… will you be leaving today?"

A plan was forming in the Doctor's mind, and he shook his head. "Not if Rose's mum has her way," he said. "Never one to miss a chance to serve her cottage pie, that one."

Sarah Jane chuckled weakly. "You've changed, Doctor."

"Nah, I haven't."

"No, you really have. And do you know what? I think it's a good change."

The approval of one of his oldest and best friends warmed his hearts. "Do you think so?"

"I do." She smiled for real then. "There's a park near my house on Bannerman Road. I'll meet you there tomorrow afternoon at 3:00—and I'll trust the TARDIS to get you there this time."

Sarah Jane patted Rose on the shoulder, and then the Doctor watched her walk away all by herself. He was already mentally making a list of the parts he'd need for a new K9 unit.

"Come on then," he said, and Rose raised an eyebrow at the false cheer. "Back to the TARDIS, both of you," he said, looking at Mickey who had just walked up behind Rose.

Smoke wafted out of the building, but the stairs were still safe and the first floor seemed mostly untouched by the blast. Rose and the Doctor walked hand in hand back up the stairs to the TARDIS, Mickey trailing along behind them. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" she asked, bumping his shoulder with hers.

"That we just changed Kenny's life?" he suggested, pushing through the storeroom door.

"No… that's a thought though, innit?" Rose used her key to open the TARDIS doors while the Doctor made sure no one had seen them come in. "He'll be the school hero for weeks, long enough for them to figure out he's a good kid. It's not always about the big things."

"Not always, though I think stopping the evil aliens from taking over the planet yet again merits some acknowledgement. Now," he said, squeezing her hand. "What were you thinking?"

"We should ask Sarah Jane to come with us."

The Doctor stumbled into the TARDIS. He'd love to travel with Sarah Jane again, but he suspected she and Rose had been laughing at his expense earlier. _Do I really want Rose to learn all my old secrets from Sarah Jane?_

"Er… well…"

"It's just… traveling with you is brilliant, Doctor, and I never want to quit." A little of his anxiety eased at those words, but he felt a but coming. "Sometimes, it's lonely though. Because you've seen so much and you understand it all, and I feel… it would be nice to not be the only person in the room who didn't get it, that's all."

Mickey walked in before he could say anything to that—not that he knew exactly how to respond. _Do I make Rose feel like she's somehow less than me?_

She waited for his answer, but as soon as Mickey closed the door behind him, the Doctor said, "All right, I'll drop you off at the Estate for the evening. Rose, be ready to leave tomorrow at three. I told Sarah Jane we'd meet her at a park near her house."

"I'm surprised she trusted you to make it, after what happened last time," Rose teased.

"Oi! I'll have you know I'm the best TARDIS pilot in the universe."

"I'm pretty sure you're the only one, mate," Mickey said.

DWDWDWDWDW

Rose was still chuckling over the Doctor's indignant reaction to Mickey's zinger when she zipped her pack shut the next day. "Taking off again?" her mum said.

"Mum," Rose said on a sigh.

"I just don't understand why you can't stay in one place for even a week, that's all. But I guess himself don't do that."

There wasn't any heat behind the words, and Rose was in too good a mood to argue, so she just kissed her on the cheek as she stepped through the door. "I'll call you," she promised.

In the stairwell, she heard another door open and Mickey followed her out of the building. "Where're you going?" she asked.

"I'm coming with you. See, I know how it works. You didn't even remember to say goodbye. So I'm coming with you to the park."

Rose bit back a retort. She knew Mickey's words were supposed to make her feel guilty, because yeah, she had been about to leave without stopping to saying goodbye. _Thought we sorta did last night though._

But if he wanted to follow her onto the TARDIS to prove a point, she wasn't going to stop him. The Doctor raised an eyebrow when he trailed in behind her, but she shook her head quickly.

"What's this?" she asked, spotting something shiny in the corner.

"Just something I made for Sarah Jane last night," he said, moving around the console and setting the coordinates for the park.

_Ah, a new K-9 then_, Rose realised. "Right, I'm gonna just go put my pack in my room while you take us to the park."

She had just stepped back into the corridor when she felt the soft jolt that indicted the TARDIS had rematerialised. Rose ran a hand over the wall. _You got us here on time?_ An affirmative answer washed over her, and she stroked the rondel in thanks.

It occurred to her as she jogged back to the console room that she'd just done exactly what she and Sarah Jane had laughed at the Doctor for—stroking bits of the TARDIS and having a private conversation with the ship. She felt the time ship's amusement and grinned to herself.

Sarah Jane was just entering the TARDIS when she reached the console room. Rose watched from the shadows as the other woman took in the cavernous room. The surprise on her face didn't make any sense until she said, "You've redecorated."

"Do you like it?" His eagerness to please was painfully evident, and Rose's heart ached for him. How must it feel, to always be leaving behind the people you love? _Maybe he does it because he doesn't know if they'll stay with him when he changes._

Sarah Jane ran her hand over one of the coral pillars. "Oh, I, I do. Yeah. I preferred it as it was, but… It'll do."

Rose peeked out from behind a strut. "I love it," she said, feeling the warm hum from the TARDIS as she wrapped her arm around the coral.

Sarah Jane chuckled. "Hey you, what's forty seven times three hundred and sixty nine?"

The answer came to her automatically. "17,343."

"See, you're more than a match for him," Sarah Jane said, tilting her head toward the Doctor.

Rose blinked at the barrage of emotions she felt from the Doctor. Concern and pleasure seemed to be warring against each other, and she couldn't understand either of them.

"You and me both," she said, resolving to ignore it for now. "Doctor?"

He looked up from the console panel he'd been staring at. "Um, we're about to head off, but you could come with us." He grinned then, and Rose let out a breath of relief. She hadn't been sure what his answer would be.

But Sarah Jane was shaking her head before the Doctor had finished asking the question. "I can't do this anymore. Besides, I've got a much bigger adventure ahead. Time I stopped waiting for you and found a life of my own." Rose nodded; she understood more than anyone how easy it could be to lose sight of who you were while traveling with the Doctor.

"Can I come?" Mickey asked and Sarah Jane's eyes widened. "No, not with you," he corrected quickly, then looked at the Doctor. "I mean with you. Because I'm not the tin dog, and I want to see what's out there."

_So that's why he wanted to tag along this afternoon. _Arguments stuck in Rose's throat. Sarah Jane understood what it was like to live with the Doctor; they could have commiserated and encouraged each other. But Mickey… he'd never done anything but try to convince her to stay on the Estate.

Sarah Jane walked around the console to stand beside him. "Oh, go on, Doctor. Sarah Jane Smith, and Mickey Smith. You need a Smith on board."

The Doctor glanced over at Rose, and she knew he could tell how much she wanted him to say no. On the other hand, they both knew how impossibly rude that would be, and she knew what his answer would be before he opened his mouth. "Okay then, I could do with a laugh."

"Rose, is that okay?" Mickey asked, but it was too late.

"No, great," Rose said, and she didn't care if Mickey could tell she was lying. "Why not?"

"Well, I'd better go," Sarah Jane said.

Rose hugged her good-bye, then asked the one question that had been on her mind for the last twenty four hours. She wouldn't leave the Doctor; she'd seen the naked fear in his eyes when he talked about losing his friends. But on the other hand… "What do I do if he decides to leave me behind?"

Sarah Jane looked over her shoulder, and Rose knew the Doctor was behind her. "You come find me, if you need to one day—find me."


	7. Chapter 7

The Doctor escaped the console room for his private study the minute they were in the Vortex. Rose didn't know the room existed, which suited his current mood perfectly.

The study, like all of the rooms on the TARDIS, changed from time to time to match the evolving personality of her Time Lord. Right now, the walls were a dark blue and two comfy chairs flanked the fireplace. The second chair was a bit of a mystery-not-mystery, since he never invited companions to join him here. Still, this is what the room had looked like when he'd peeked in on Christmas Day, and he hadn't argued with his TARDIS.

He hadn't argued because he knew who the other chair was supposed to be for. The TARDIS was well aware of his feelings for Rose Tyler, and had provided a none too subtle hint of what she thought he should do.

He could feel Rose's annoyance as clearly as if she were in the room with him. She'd not wanted Mickey along, and she didn't particularly care for being saddled with him. He leaned against the mantel and ran his other hand through his hair. That right there—that was why he needed to get away from her. No matter how many barriers he put up, he could still tell almost exactly how she was feeling.

"Oh, this is nice!"

The Doctor whirled around to face Rose. "Rose! How did you find me?"

"TARDIS in my head, 'member?" Rose said with a shrug.

"Ah, right." _Traitor._

He flung himself down into one of the chairs. "Well, since you're here, have a seat."

She took the other chair and looked around the room. "What is this place, Doctor?"

He steadfastly refused her eyes. The TARDIS finally had her here, where she thought Rose belonged, but that didn't mean he had to go along with whatever plans his ship had. "My study."

Her embarrassment took him by surprise. "Right… of course, this is private. I don't know why the TARDIS let me in, I'll just go."

Without much thought, his hand shot out to grab her wrist. "You can stay," he said, even as part of him wondered what on Gallifrey he was thinking. "Sit back down and tell me why you came looking for me."

The Doctor released her wrist so she could sit down, and once she was settled in the chair, she pulled both her legs up and stared at the fire. "Rose?" He could tell she was nervous—both her mood and her body language were an open book—but he didn't understand why.

She closed her eyes for a minute, and when she opened them again, a mask had fallen. "I wanted to ask about… about telepathy."

He raised an eyebrow but let her get away with the obvious attempt at misdirection. "What do you want to know?"

"Well…" Rose brushed a hand over the arm of the chair. "You said we'd have to be touching for you to read my mind, yeah? But we hold hands all the time, so there's got to be more to it than that."

He stretched his legs out in front of him. "There is. Remember how I put my hands on your temples before?" She nodded. "The telepathic centres of the brain are very close to the temple, and that touch—for a touch telepath—provides the needed physical contact for a mental connection."

"So would I be able to do that? Like, if I touched Mum on the temple, would I be able to read her mind?"

"Once your telepathy is fully developed, but…" A stray thought caught him, like he'd been trying to put his finger on something not quite right and it had suddenly fall into place.

"What is it, Doctor?"

"Rose, have you had any headaches, nausea, any discomfort since we learned about your telepathy?"

"No—well, except for the other night, when we were working on barriers."

"That's… that's not… you should…" The Doctor rubbed the back of his neck.

Rose raised an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "Are you saying you want me to be sick?"

"Of course not, but Rose, developing the telepathic circuits of the brain is not a comfortable experience! You should at least be getting headaches. We all got headaches."

The TARDIS hummed in the back of his mind, but he ignored her. He needed to figure this out.

"D'you think the TARDIS is helping?" Rose suggested.

The hum grew stronger. "Well… she does have an extremely strong telepathic field. I suppose it's possible she's connected with you enough to block those negative side effects. Time Tots were always forbidden to enter the nurseries when our telepathy was developing; maybe that's why?"

"Nursery?"

He shot her a look. "Honestly Rose, you know she's alive. Why does it surprise you that they're grown?" Reproof buffeted him from two directions. "Sorry," he muttered.

"What do you mean, she's connected with me?"

"If I'm right, and she seems to be saying I am, then she's in your mind, keeping you from getting sick."

Rose snuggled back in her chair. "Is he right?" she whispered.

The Doctor felt his ship's confirmation and Rose's answering gratitude, and a rock lodged itself in the pit of his stomach. "Oh, this is bad. This is… this is bad."

"What's so bad about it?"

"Well, I might have just realised why our attempts at blocking emotions gave you a headache."

The Doctor glanced over at Rose, hoping she was already following along with what he was saying, but the little furrow in her brow told him he'd have to explain further.

"What's that got to do with this?"

"Time Lords are bonded to their TARDISes, Rose. We call it a telepathic link, but really it's more empathic."

"Yeah, that's why she couldn't translate when you were sick, right?"

He nodded, rubbing at his temples. "And if she's in your mind all the time, keeping you from getting sick, then you and I are already connected on a shallow level, just like I'm connected to her."

Rose chuckled. "What exactly are you finding amusing about this?" the Doctor asked, a bit testily.

"Nothing… s'just, I don't think the TARDIS liked you calling your connection shallow," she said and giggled.

The Doctor's mouth dropped open. "You could feel that?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Well, I think we just proved my theory." He rubbed at his face.

"I still don't quite get why this is bad."

"My connection with her, and yours too I'd guess, they always stay open. She needs mine to function—hence the translation matrix not working, as you pointed out. And you… you need yours to hold the pain at bay." His head dropped to the back of his chair and glared up at his interfering ship. "So we're both constantly connected to the same TARDIS. It's like a three-way conference call."

The Doctor finally felt a hint of understanding from Rose. "A three-way conference call we can't hang up on."

"Exactly."

"Guess you'll just have to learn not to react to things emotionally," Rose told him cheekily.

The Doctor tried to tamp down his anxiety. "I'm sorry, Rose," he offered. "If I'd known this would happen, I never…"

"You never what?" she asked. "Never would have offered to go into my mind? Because we both know that's why all this is happening. If you hadn't looked to make sure the effects of Bad Wolf were still contained, I never…"

"Never would have fully developed your telepathic abilities," he finished. He'd figured that out, but hadn't known if Rose knew.

Rose fiddled a bit with the hem of her shirt, and he waited for her to say something, for her anger that he'd messed around with her head like this, for her to ask the TARDIS to remove their connection because she'd rather feel the headaches than be reminded of what he'd done.

"I know you… you said this is bad, I know you don't want it, but…" Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I'm glad you did it," she said.

He stared at her in confusion. "Glad I did what?"

Rose sighed and looked up at him. "I'm glad you went and unlocked that room. I feel… I feel like this is what I was supposed to be, like I've been sorta waiting for this since the Game Station."

The Doctor refused to think about what else had happened at the Game Station, knowing there was no way Rose could miss the change in his emotions if he thought of her… "You're not…" He cleared his throat. "You're not angry?"

"Um, no. Should I be?" Rose took in the way his lower lip stuck out a bit farther, the way it did when he was unsure of himself. "You were blaming yourself for this again, weren't you?"

"What? Of course I wasn't," he said. "What's there to blame myself for? You're fine, I'm fine… we're all fine."

The surge of affection she felt for this daft alien was so familiar to Rose that she hardly gave it a thought, until she noticed the Doctor's hand had frozen on his tie. She took in his unblinking stare and put the pieces of the conversation together in a way she hadn't until now.

_Right. Constantly aware of what the other is feeling…_

A warm flush crept up Rose's face. "Doctor…"

"Yep, we're all fine," he repeated and jumped out of his chair. "Anyway, my stomach says it's time for tea. Where'd you leave Mickey?"

"He's in the media room, watching football most likely."

The Doctor bounced on the balls of his feet. "You go get him and I'll get us something to eat. Galley, ten minutes," he said, pointing at her and then practically running out of the room.

When he'd explained their connection, Rose's first thought had been, _Well, that explains why I actually felt what you meant last night when you talked about what it would be like to lose someone you love._ Even if he hadn't been broadcasting his emotions, she still would have known how that sentence was gonna end—because in the context, could it end any other way? But her absolute assurance that he loved her had gone beyond just knowing him.

Which was why she'd teased him about being more careful about what he let slip. She hadn't figured on that going both ways. "Guess you're not the only one who's going to have to learn not to react to things emotionally," Rose muttered. She bit her lip and stared into the fire, more than a little worried that this would drive the Doctor away from her.

Even all the way from the galley, she could still feel his agitation. The ball of emotions was so jumbled up, she had a hard time picking out the different strands of it. Fear, disbelief, discomfort…

Rose squeezed her eyes shut. This was why she'd never told the Doctor she loved him, even though she'd been pretty sure he felt the same. Dealing with the Doctor and emotions was sort of like approaching a wounded animal—you had to go slowly, or you'd scare him off. _And you might get hurt in the process,_ she added grimly, thinking about how quickly he'd bolted when she'd accidentally shown him just the smallest hint of what she felt for him.

His discomfort shifted slightly, and she paid attention to the change without really meaning to. He was still struggling with the realisation that she loved him, but… His emotions were shot through with the uncomfortable feeling of being exposed, something she wouldn't recognise if she hadn't felt the same way. _Ah. Of course, he's figured out I know he loves me too._

For the first time since they'd discovered she was telepathic, Rose was unhappy with the changes. The TARDIS hummed soothingly, but she wasn't reassured. "What if he feels so trapped or whatever that he chucks me out?"

The ship's obvious exasperation drew a smile from her, and she finally got out of her chair. "Hopefully you're right, Dear," she murmured. "After all, we can't let him split us up, can we?"


	8. Chapter 8

AN: And here we begin the GITF rewrite. I didn't know quite what to do when I approached this story, since it's out of character for the canon characters. Finally I did a bare bones outline of the basic plot and kept the lines that were either A) crucial to that plot, or B) still fit with the characters and the changes that have happened to date in the story. Some scenes were cut, and some were moved or rearranged. I'm sure that won't bother most of you.

Boredom caught the Doctor by surprise the next morning when he was shaving, until he realised it wasn't his own. _This is going to take some getting used to,_ he thought as he rinsed his face and then wiped the remnants of shaving cream off with a towel.

Picking up on her boredom was child's play compared to what had happened last night though. His hand shook a little as he tied his tie, remembering the moment he'd known, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she loved him. In true-to-form contradictory fashion, knowing she returned his feelings only made him more terrified of them. If she loved him too, he didn't have a reason to hold back.

_And if I take that step and we're together, losing her will hurt so much more._

Right. That was his reason to hold back. He shook himself out of those morose thoughts and grabbed his jacket and coat on the way out of his bedroom. Rose and Mickey were both leaning against the railing and looked at him expectantly when he entered the console room. The Doctor put his hands in his pockets and looked at his companions. "Well, Mickey—first trip, where do you want to go? Past, future…"

Mickey rubbed his hands together. "Surprise me, Boss," Mickey said.

Rose grinned and the Doctor darted around the console. "Surprise it is!" he said, setting the randomiser and throwing the ship into flight.

They watched the Time Rotor churn into action and waited until they had settled onto the surface of wherever they were. The Doctor pretended the buzz of excitement he felt was only his own, and gestured grandly toward the door once they'd landed.

"Anything could be outside this door," he said dramatically. "Alien worlds, the far distant past…"

_That_ amusement wasn't his. He looked over his shoulder at Rose, who was barely holding in her laugher. "Is there a problem, Miss Tyler?"

"Why don't we just open the door and find out what's on the other side, instead of trying to sound so impressive," she suggested.

The Doctor rolled his eyes and pushed the doors open, exiting and letting Rose and Mickey follow him into a darkened spaceship. "It's a spaceship," Mickey crowed. "Brilliant, I got a space ship on my first go."

"Looks kind of abandoned," Rose observed, and he let her feel his pride in her for looking past the outer appearances. "Anyone on board?" she asked him.

"Nah, nothing here," he said, rocking back on his heels. "Well, nothing dangerous. Well. Not that dangerous." He looked around and realised something didn't feel quite right. Not dangerous maybe, but… "Know what, I'll just have a quick scan, in case there's anything dangerous."

While he looked into the terminal, Rose looked over his shoulder. "So, what's the date? How far have we gone?"

"About three thousand years into your future, give or take." He flicked a switch and opened the window to the outside. "Fifty-first century. Dagomar Cluster, you're a long way from home, Mickey. Two and a half galaxies!"

"Mickey Smith," Rose said gently, "meet the universe."

The Doctor looked over the computers again, fully tuning out Rose and Mickey. There was something not right here. "Dear me, we've had some cowboys in here," he muttered, tossing lengths of wire and parts out from under the terminal. "There's a ton of repair work going on."

One of the displays caught his attention and he bent over the console to take a better look. A full scan of the ship was running, and the Doctor raised an eyebrow at the unusual results. "Now that's odd; look at that." Mickey left the porthole to look over his shoulder, and the Doctor pointed at the screen. "All the warp engines are going, full capacity!"

He leaned over the display, making sure he wasn't reading it wrong. "There's enough power running through this ship to punch a hole in the universe," he said, then peered back up at the stationary stars, "but we're not moving… So where's all that power going?"

"Where have all the crew gone?" Rose asked.

The Doctor frowned and looked at the display again. "Good question. No life sign readings on board."

"Well, we're in deep space, they didn't just nip out for a quick bite."

"No, I've checked all the smoking pods…" _Smoking pods? Why'd I call the escape pods smoking pods? _Something tickled at his nose and he straightened up. "Do you smell that?"

Rose took in a deep breath. "Someone's cooking."

"Sunday roast, definitely!" Mickey exclaimed.

The Doctor flicked a switch on the console. They all followed the sound of the loud hiss behind them and turned to see a door opening up. A door which revealed a fireplace that, by the looks of it, was eighteenth century French revival—not a period popular in fifty-first century decor.

"Well, there's something you don't see on your average spaceship." He jogged over to it, pulling his sonic out as he moved. Up close, he could tell that his earlier assumptions were correct. "Eighteenth century. French. Nice mantle." He scanned the fireplace, and the results proved one of his ides wrong. "Not a hologram. It's not even a reproduction. This actually _is _an eighteenth century French fireplace. Double sided. There's another room through there."

He got down on his haunches to look through the fireplace. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rose stand on tiptoe to look through a porthole. "It can't be; that's the outer hull of the ship—look."

But the Doctor was more concerned with what he saw through the fireplace: a young girl, about seven or eight, dressed in period clothing. "Hello," he said, kneeling down and peering through the flames.

"Hello," she replied, and he immediately recognised that she was speaking eighteenth century French.

_Curiouser and curiouser._

"What's your name?"

Rose leaned down and looked through the fireplace with him.

"Reinette."

"Reinette. That's a lovely name." He glanced around her room, trying to gather some more clues to this mystery. "Can you tell me where you are at the moment, Reinette?"

"In my bedroom."

_Yes, that much was evident from your nightgown._ "And… where's your bedroom? Where do you live, Reinette?" he pressed the child.

"In Paris, of course."

Her calm assurance that everyone would live in Paris, of course, was so typical for her age and era that he had to bite back a smile. "Paris, right," he said.

"Monsieur, what are you doing in my fireplace?"

Ah yes, that was rather the point of things, wasn't it? What _was_ he doing in her fireplace, or rather, what was her fireplace doing on a fifty-first century spaceship?

"Oh, it's just a… routine… fire check," he told her. "Can you tell me what year it is?"

She smiled the smile that all children give when adults are being ridiculous. "Of course I can! Seventeen hundred and twenty-seven."

"Right, lovely," the Doctor said, nodding, thinking of all the good music written in 1727. "One of my favourites." He paused for a moment, remembering the nasty summer weather. "August is rubbish though. Stay indoors," he advised Reinette.

"Okay!" he said, moving back to the topic. "That's all for now. Hope you enjoy the rest of the fire—night night!"

"Good night, monsieur," she said as he stood up, his mind racing.

"But you said this was the fifty-first century," Mickey protested.

The Doctor inwardly rolled his eyes at the pouty tone. "I also said this ship was generating enough power to punch a hole in the universe. I _think_ we just found the hole. Trans spatial-temporal hyperlink," he muttered, rattling off terms that seemed relevant to the case.

"What's that?" Mickey whispered.

The Doctor rocked back on his heels. "No idea. I just made it up. Didn't want to say magic door."

The three of them glanced back at the fireplace, the Doctor's mind whirring with what he'd learned from Reinette. Rose's curiosity glowed pink at the edge of his consciousness. "And on the other side of the _magic door,_" she said, her tongue sticking through her teeth, "is France in 1727?"

"Well, she was speaking French," the Doctor allowed. "Right period French too." He tossed his coat over a chair and turned back to the fireplace.

"She was speaking English, I heard it," Mickey countered.

"That's the TARDIS, translates for ya," Rose explained, grabbing him by the shoulders.

"Even French?" Mickey asked, his voice going higher.

The Doctor smirked; he could feel Rose's amusement with Mickey—he'd believe the TARDIS could translate, but not one of the most common Earth languages?

But the magic door held the Doctor's attention. If he could see through, there had to be a way to get to the other side, preferably without being singed in the flames. He examined the mantle and found a lever on one side. "Gotcha," he said, pulling up on it.

"Doctor!" Exasperation coloured Rose's voice, and he shot her a cheeky grin. Jumping in without a plan, that was his modus operandi.

On the other side, in what was apparently eighteenth century Paris, Reinette was now asleep in her bed. The Doctor frowned a bit to himself; he hated it when children became involved in his adventures, because they were so easily hurt.

He looked around the room, searching for something out of place, some reason why her bedroom would be connected to the spaceship. From her window, he saw Paris in winter, with Notre Dame towering over the city. On the street below, he heard horses' hooves clattering on the cobblestones; so far, everything matched up with the date and place she had given.

A horse neighing woke the child from her slumber, and she sat bolt upright in bed. "It's okay," he said, realising she was aware of his presence. "Don't scream; it's me, it's the fireplace man. Look," he said, pulling out his sonic and using it to light the candle by her bed. "We were talking, just a moment ago. I was in your fireplace."

Reinette's eyes widened. "Monsieur, that was weeks ago. That was months!"

"Really?" he asked, scratching behind his ear. He hadn't gotten the month from Reinette before, or he would have noticed the displacement the moment he'd appeared in her rom.

He walked back to the fireplace. "There must be a loose connection," he said, tapping under the mantle next to the lever. "Need to get a man in."

"Who are you?" she demanded. "And what are you doing here?"

The Doctor hardly noticed her question, his attention focused on something much, much more important. The mantle clock was broken, but… But then… "Okay, that's scary."

"You're scared of a broken clock?" she said, her voice full of disdain.

"Just a bit scared, yeah. Just a little tiny bit. Because you see if this clock's broken," he turned back to Reinette, "and it's the only clock in the room…" He double-checked the room. "Then what's that?"

Reinette tilted her head, listening to the ominous sound. The skin around her mouth tightened when she realised that something in her clock-less room was ticking, loudly and nearby.

"Because you see, that's not a clock," the Doctor said, listening properly now. "You can tell by the resonance. Too big. Six feet, I'd say—the size of a man."

"What is it?" she said, her voice trembling.

The Doctor slowly worked his way back to the bed, checking behind the curtains for the ticking thing. "Now let's think," he said. "If you were a thing that ticked and you were hiding in someone's bedroom, first thing you'd do is kill the clock. No one notices the sound of one clock ticking, but two…" He listened closely to the direction the sound was coming from, and realised it was under her bed. "You might start to wonder if you were really alone."

"Stay on the bed. Right in the middle. Don't put your hands or feet over the edge." Reinette froze in the centre of the bed and the Doctor bent down onto the checkerboard floor and waved the sonic under the bedskirt. A hand reached out and knocked it away, with a sound of a gear popping.

The Doctor spotted black buckle dress shoes on the other side of the bed, and he straightened slowly, keeping his eyes trained in that direction. "Reinette," he whispered when he saw a large droid dressed in a black formal coat lurking in the curtains. "Don't look round."

"You, stay exactly where you are," he ordered the droid. "Hold still, let me look."

He'd seen something on the sonic before it was knocked away, but it couldn't… To be certain, he took Reinette's head in his hands and initiated the most basic telepathic link. "You've been scanning her brain. What, you've crossed two galaxies and thousands of years just to scan a child's brain? What could there be in a little girl's mind worth blowing a hole in the universe?"

"I don't understand," Reinette said. "It wants me?" She turned to the droid. "You want me?"

The droid cocked its head. "Not yet. You are incomplete."

"Incomplete? What's that mean, incomplete?" The droid stared at him from behind his garish mask. "You can answer her, you can answer me. What do you mean, incomplete?" he demanded, pointing the sonic at it.

The droid came around the bed and extended its arm toward the Doctor, and a sharp blade slid beneath his nose. "Monsieur, be careful!" the little girl squealed from her bed.

"Just a nightmare, Reinette," he said, the fear in her voice sparking his anger. "Don't worry about it. Everyone has nightmares."

The Doctor and the droid began a dangerous dance, the monster slashing its arm over and over, and the Doctor avoiding every slice. "Even monsters from under the bed have nightmares, don't you Monster?" The droid slashed at him one more time and the Doctor dodged yet again, grinning when the blade sank into the soft wood on the mantelpiece.

"What do monsters have nightmares about?" Reinette asked, and he was gratified that she sounded curious now, instead of scared.

"Me!" the Doctor claimed with a triumphant cackle, flipping the lever on the mantle and taking the droid with him back to a spaceship in the fifty-first century—where he strongly suspected he came from.

"Doctor!" Rose shouted when they appeared, but he didn't have time to answer. He ran for a fire extinguisher mounted on the wall and fired it at the droid.

The cold air froze it in place. "Excellent, ice gun," Mickey said.

"Fire extinguisher," the Doctor countered, tossing it at Rose.

She caught it handily and asked, "Where'd that thing come from?"

"Here."

"So why's he dressed like that?" Mickey asked.

"Field trip to France, some kind of basic camouflage protocol." The Doctor walked over to the droid. Now that the danger was over, he wanted to see what exactly this creature was made of.

"Nice needlework," he said, looking at the white lace cravat cascading down its front. "Shame about the face," he added, then tilted the mask back to reveal an intricate set of gears. _Well, that explains the ticking_.

"Oh, you are beautiful!" he exclaimed, taking in the workmanship of the piece.

He pulled out his specs to take a closer look. As soon as he slipped them on, he was blindsided by a burst of emotion from Rose. When he glanced over his shoulder at her, her cheeks were tinged faintly pink, and her chest rose and fell with rapid breaths.

_Well that's interesting…_

Setting her obvious attraction aside and resolutely ignoring how beautiful she was, he looked at the droid again. "No really, you are, you're gorgeous—look at that!" he told Rose and Mickey. "Space age clockwork, I love it. I've got chills!" The droid kept ticking, and the Doctor got the distinct impression he was being watched. "Listen, seriously. I mean this from the heart—and by the way," he pointed to his chest, "count both—it would be a crime, it would be an act of vandalism, to disassemble you."

Behind him, he heard Rose heft the fire extinguisher up. Amusement came through now, though the earlier spike of attraction hadn't faded.

The reminder that she was there, and that the droid had threatened a child, strengthened his resolve. "But that won't stop me," he said, raising his sonic.

The droid tilted its head, the cold blast from the fire extinguisher wearing off. It managed to tap its left hand against its right arm, and it was gone.

The Doctor watched the beam of light as it disappeared into the ceiling. "Short range teleport, can't have gone far—could still be on board!" he said as he replaced his sonic inside his suit jacket.

Rose hefted her fire extinguisher. "Well come on then," she said, her eyes shining. "Sounds like we've got work to do."

The Doctor glanced at the fireplace, then back at Rose. Reinette was a mystery that piqued his curiosity, but on the other hand, the droid was their best clue to solving it. "Lead the way, Rose Tyler."

Rose put her fire extinguisher under her left arm and inspected the two corridors that branched off from the fireplace room. They'd come from the right, so she pointed left. "This way."

The Doctor fell into step beside her a moment later, and for the first time she could remember, Rose was a little uncomfortable with his closeness. He'd felt her reaction to his glasses earlier, she was sure of it. She hadn't realised their connection would leave her feeling this… exposed.

Surprisingly, after the way he'd run away from her last night, he didn't seem too upset to find out she fancied him. _Or maybe he knew that already, or maybe he's like any other bloke and enjoyed the little ego stroke._ Whatever the case, she had a feeling navigating the maze of which emotions would scare him off and which he could handle would be giving her a worse headache than her budding telepathy.

"Look at this!" Mickey's voice yanked Rose back to their current adventure. "That's an eye in there. That's a real eye."

The Doctor took a peek while Rose looked around the corridor. There was a small hatch in the wall and she opened it. Immediately, a familiar _thump-thump_ filled the air.

Mickey left the eyeball to peer inside. "What is that? What's that in the middle there? Looks like it's wired in."

"It's a heart, Mickey. It's a human heart."

The Doctor rubbed his nose and stuck his tongue out slightly, but Rose could feel his curiosity under the evident disgust. She rolled her eyes at him and whispered, "The worse things are, the better you like it." He shrugged sheepishly, and she rolled her eyes again.

They left the disturbing find, and in twenty feet, reached a junction. "Which way, O Fearless Leader?" the Doctor asked.

After looking in all three directions, Rose tilted her head right. Mickey grabbed her elbow. "Shouldn't we be like, leaving clues so we know how to get back?"

Rose felt certain she could find her way back exactly the way they'd come—in fact, if she concentrated, she could point straight at the TARDIS. "We've never gotten lost before," she said, looking over at the Doctor.

He puffed out his chest slightly. "That's because I'm a Time Lord. We've got dozens of extra senses, and one of them is the ability to retrace our steps perfectly."

Faint alarm bells rang in the back of Rose's mind. That was almost exactly what she'd thought a moment ago. "So, let's turn left," she said quickly, wanting to cover the curiosity before the Doctor could feel it.

She turned around to walk backwards a few steps so she could talk to Mickey. "Keep your eyes open. We might find anything—" She squealed and whirled around when something pressed into her neck.

"Like, for instance a horse," the Doctor said, grabbing the reins as the animal shied away. He petted his nose and cooed, "It's all right, you just startled her. She's not going to hurt you. Here Rose, why don't you pet him so he knows you're nice?"

Rose reached out a hand and stroked his silky neck. "Yeah, m'sorry," she said, smiled when he pushed his nose against her hand and nickered softly.

"He likes you," the Doctor said.

"How can you tell?"

"I speak horse," he said, and Rose just nodded. _Of course he does._

"This is just… just… mental," Mickey spluttered. "Cameras with eyes, and hearts, and now a horse, and you're both acting like this is normal. Is this an average day?"

The Doctor tucked his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "An average day? Who wants an average day, Mickey Smith? We travel to leave average behind! Life in the TARDIS means no more average days."

Mickey rubbed at his eyebrow. "Yeah, all right. So where did the horse come from then?"

Rose grinned. "Now you're asking the right questions. Let's follow him, see where he goes." She turned the horse around and tapped it lightly on the rump. "Go on, go home," she encouraged.

"Home" was apparently a word the horse understood. He immediately started down the corridor, leading them straight to glossy white barn doors, which they pushed through to find themselves in a spacious garden.

The Doctor sucked in a breath. This riddle grew more complex by the minute. A fireplace that opened onto eighteenth century France, a ship built with human parts, and a barn door that also led to the eighteenth century, his time senses confirmed.

"Think we should look around?" Rose asked.

"Definitely. But…" He took her fire extinguisher and set his and hers down on the other side of the doors. "We shouldn't need those here, and they'll attract too much attention if we're seen."

That taken care of, he led the way toward a terraced section of the garden. "So when and where are we?" Rose asked, slipping her hand into his.

He glanced around at the garden, quickly taking in the formal manicured lawns and the long square ponds. The bare trees and chill wind told him it was winter. Rose shivered, and he automatically shucked his jacket, offering it to her. "Thanks," she murmured, slipping her arms through the sleeves.

"Well, it's definitely the eighteenth century," he said. "Late 1744 or early 1745. Aside from that… someplace with a very nice garden." She laughed and squeezed his hand. Her affection seeped into him, and the warmth warred against his discomfort.

Voices drifting on the wind distracted him from this whole sharing feelings business. He held a finger to his lips and gestured for Rose and Mickey to follow him to a garden wall they could hide behind. The Doctor took position behind a tall stone urn with Rose beside him, peeking over his shoulder. Mickey grumbled and dropped onto the ground.

Two women strolled by. "Oh Catherine, you are too wicked," one said.

"Oh, speaking of wicked, I hear Madame de Chateauroux is ill and close to death," Catherine said.

"Yes, I am devastated." Both women laughed.

"Indeed, I myself am frequently inconsolable." Catherine peered up at her friend. "The king will therefore need a new mistress. You love the king of course."

The Doctor missed her reply as several puzzle pieces fell into place. Madame de Chateauroux had been Louis XV's mistress before Madame du Pompadour—also known to her friends as Reinette.

A peacock called out behind him, and he quickly ducked back behind the urn as Reinette looked over her shoulder. "Is something wrong, my dear?" Catherine asked.

"Not wrong, no." The Doctor heard the note of hesitant curiosity in her voice. _She must have caught a glimpse of me. We'll have to stay here until they are out of sight._

He tried to listen to the rest of the conversation, but sensing the danger, Rose scooted closer to him. Suddenly, every bit of his attention was focused on where the curve of her hip pressed into his side, and how he could feel the slight movement of her chest with every breath she took.

But when her breath caught and she stiffened slightly, he remembered their connection went both ways. If he could pick up on Rose's sexual attraction toward him, of course she could sense his toward her.

Shoving his discomfort down with great effort, he refocused on Reinette and her friend, who were still talking. "You know of course that the King is to attend the Yew Tree Ball."

"As am I."

The Doctor waited a minute, then, satisfied that the coast was clear, he turned to his companions. "What are you doing on the ground, Mickey? Come on, let's get back to the ship."

Mickey grumbled and brushed dirt off himself, but the Doctor tuned him out. When the horse followed them back into the corridor, he thought about sending it back, but it seemed of paltry importance compared to what he'd just realised.

Rose handed him his jacket and one of the fire extinguishers and kept the other for herself. "Okay, Doctor, you've just figured something out. Out with it—who were those women? Where were we?"

"Versailles, and one of them was Reinette."

Rose stopped in mid-stride. "The girl in the fireplace?"

"One and the same." He started down the corridor. "Jean-Antoinette Poisson, known to her friends as Reinette. One of the most accomplished women to have ever lived."

"From the way you say accomplished, it sounds like you mean more than just a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages," Rose said.

The Doctor chuckled at her literary allusion. "All that and more," he confirmed. "In fact—"

He stopped talking when they turned a corner and spotted a two way mirror. "What do we have here?" he said quietly. An eighteenth century French drawing room, most likely at Versailles judging by the quality of the furnishings.

Mickey pressed his nose to the glass. "It's France again. We can see France." Louis XV walked into the room, dressed in formal attire, and Mickey chuckled. "Blimey, look at this guy. "Who does he think he is?"

"The king of France," the Doctor answered matter-of-factly. The king dismissed his courtiers, and a moment later, Reinette entered the room. She circled the king, and even without being able to hear what she said he knew she was seducing him.

"I _think_ this is the night they met. The night of the Yew Tree Ball. In no time flat she'll get herself established as his official mistress, with her own rooms at the palace, even her own title—Madame de Pompadour."

There was a moment of silence while Rose and Mickey processed this. "So all these windows," Rose said slowly, "they all open onto her life?"

"Yup. Time windows, deliberately arranged along the life of one particular woman. A spaceship from the fifty-first century stalking a woman from the eighteenth. Why?"

On the other side of the glass, the king left the room. Once alone, Reinette walked toward the mirror they hid behind and primped a little. "The queen must have loved her," Rose murmured, and he was surprised to catch a hint of insecurity from her.

"Oh she did. They get on very well," the Doctor said.

"The king's wife and the king's girlfriend," Mickey said incredulously.

The Doctor shook his head. "France. It's a different planet."

Timelines shifted and he looked back through the mirror into France. Reinette was not alone in the room; one of the clockwork droids had found her again. "That's not supposed to happen," Rose said.

"No it's not," he answered and pushed on the mirror. It opened like a door, and armed, he walked through.


	9. Chapter 9

**Previously: **

On the other side of the glass, the king left the room. Once alone, Reinette walked toward the mirror they hid behind and primped a little. "The queen must have loved her," Rose murmured, and he was surprised to catch a hint of insecurity from her.

"Oh she did. They get on very well," the Doctor said.

"The king's wife and the king's girlfriend," Mickey said incredulously.

The Doctor shook his head. "France. It's a different planet."

Timelines shifted and he looked back through the mirror into France. Reinette was not alone in the room; one of the clockwork droids had found her again. "That's not supposed to happen," Rose said.

"No it's not," he answered and pushed on the mirror. It opened like a door, and armed, he walked through.

**Chapter Nine**

Reinette turned in surprise. "Hello, Reinette," he said, striding into the room. "Hasn't time flown?"

"Fireplace man!"

The Doctor aimed the fire extinguisher at the droid, hoping to gain a few minutes. As before, the droid froze for a minute, and the Doctor tossed the weapon to Mickey.

An odd whirring sounds filled the room. "What's it doing?" Mickey asked.

"Switching back on," the Doctor told him. "Melting the ice."

"And then what?"

"Then it kills everyone in the room," the Doctor said bluntly, tired of Mickey's inane questions. The droid melted enough of the ice to move one of his arms, and the Doctor dodged the blow. "Focuses the mind, doesn't it?"

Reinette moaned in fear. The Doctor stepped out of the droid's reach and glared at it. "Who are you? Identify yourself."

The droid merely cocked its head to one side, and the Doctor sighed at the loss of the upper hand. "Order it to answer me," he asked Reinette, hating the feeling of needing help.

She looked from him to the droid, and back to him. "Why should it listen to me?"

"I don't know; it did when you were a child." He cocked an eyebrow and said, "Let's see if you've still got it."

She nodded and drew herself up straight. "Answer his question. Answer any and all questions put to you."

Mickey stood beside her, looking like a scared little boy despite the weapon he held in his hands. Rose stood on his other side, looking every inch the warrior despite the jeans and form-fitting t-shirt she wore. The droid stood in front of them all, and the Doctor focused his attention there. It slowly lowered its arm, and he drew in a breath.

_That worked better than I thought it would._

"I am repair droid seven," it said.

"What happened to the ship?" the Doctor asked. "There was a lot of damage."

"Ion storm. Eighty-two percent systems failure"

_But that makes no sense! _"That ship hasn't moved in over a year. What's taking you so long?"

"We did not have the parts," the droid replied.

On his left, Mickey chuckled. "Always comes down to that, doesn't it? The parts."

There was a deeper issue at hand though, one Rose had pinpointed almost as soon as they'd arrived on the ship. "What's happened to the crew? Where are they?"

"We did not have the parts," the droid repeated.

"There should have been over fifty people on your ship. Where did they go?"

"We did not have the parts," the droid said for the third time, and the Doctor suspected it had gotten stuck in a rut, like an old-fashioned record.

"Fifty people don't just disappear, where…" He felt Rose's disgust at the same time as his own, and knew she'd caught on as well. "Oh. You didn't have the parts, so you used the crew."

"The crew?" Mickey repeated.

"The eye, and the heart," Rose said.

"It was just doing what it was programmed to," the Doctor explained. "Repairing the ship any way it can with whatever it could find. No one told it the crew weren't on the menu." Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. "What did you say the flight deck smelled of?"

"Someone cooking," Rose said hoarsely.

"Flesh plus heat. Barbecue."

Reinette drew in a shuddering breath. _Right. Time to change the subject._

"But what are you doing here?" he asked the droid. "You've opened up time windows; that takes colossal energy. Why come here, you could have… gone to your repair yard. Instead you've come to eighteenth century France. Why?"

"One more part is required." The droid tilted its head with a mechanical click and stared straight at Reinette.

"Then why haven't you taken it?" the Doctor asked, silently daring the droid to try.

"She is incomplete."

Utter confusion washed over the Doctor, but this time it was his own, not Rose's. "What, so that's the plan then?" he said, the vague answers making him testy. "Just keep opening up more and more time windows, scanning her brain, checking to see if she's done yet?" He was missing part of the equation, but he couldn't figure out what it was.

"Why her?" Rose asked, as always grabbing onto the human element of the mystery. The Doctor, Mickey, and Reinette all looked at Rose. She tilted her head at the droid and then Reinette. "You've got all of history to choose from," she pointed out. "Why specifically her?"

"We are the same."

That was not the answer the Doctor had expected, and judging by the horror on Reinette's face, it wasn't one she would tolerate. "We're not the same; we are in no sense the same," she denied.

"We are the same," the droid repeated.

"Get out of here. Get of here this instant," Reinette demanded, and the Doctor saw his opportunity slipping away. The droids always obeyed Reinette, even when they would not acknowledge anyone else.

"Reinette, no," he said, but even as he said it, the droid touched the teleport on its wrist and disappeared.

The Doctor ran back to the open mirror and held it open for Rose. "It's back on the ship. Rose, take Mickey and Arthur. Get after it. Follow it. Don't approach it, just watch what it does."

She cocked an eyebrow. "Arthur?"

"Good name for a horse."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes, and he could hear the unspoken question—_And who would take care of the horse, Doctor_? "No, you're not keeping the horse."

A debate over a pet was about ten steps too close to domesticity, and the Doctor shot her a cheeky grin. "We'll discuss it later, dear," he said. "Now, shift." She gave him one more disapproving glare, then stepped through the mirror behind Mickey.

The Doctor swung it closed behind them before turning back to Reinette. The courtesan looked up at him, supremely confident. "Reinette, you're going to have to trust me. I need to find out what they're looking for and to do that, I need to look inside your mind. It won't hurt a bit." He remembered what he'd told Rose just a week ago. "If there's anything you don't want me to see, just imagine a door and close it. I won't look."

She nodded her assent, and he stepped forward and placed his hands on her temples. "Fireplace man, you are inside my mind," she whispered.

The Doctor looked around him in dismay. Instead of the ordered chaos typical of a human mind, Reinette's consciousness had been ransacked, like someone had come through looking for one very specific thing. "Oh dear, Reinette. You've had some cowboys in here."

"You are in my memories. You walk among them."

He ignored her shock as he sifted through the rubble, trying to ascertain what they'd been looking for. Memories of her childhood seeped in, and he drew a breath. "Oh, there's a door just _there_, you might want to close…"

More recent memories floated to the surface, and he fought against his own discomfort with the forced intimacy. Being connected to Rose was awkward but tolerable, since they were already close, but this… Another door opened. "Oh, I see several… I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," he said awkwardly. "Just… close the door…"

She sighed and stepped closer to him. "To walk among the memories of another living soul. Do you ever get used to this?" she asked, her voice low and seductive.

The Doctor cleared his throat and attempted to put a little distance between them. "I don't make a habit of it," he said curtly.

"How can you resist?" she purred.

The Doctor finally found what the droids had been looking for. "What age are you?"

Her voice lilted with flirtation. "So impertinent a question so early in the conversation! How promising."

_This isn't a game! _With an effort, he tamped down his irritation. "Not my question, theirs. You're twenty-three and for some reason, that means you're not old enough."

Something shifted in her mind, and he grimaced. "Sorry, you might find old memories reawakening. Side effect."

Then he recognised the sensation for what it was—the subtle push of another mind against his own. "Ah ah, no peeky," he mumbled. But Reinette did not back away, instead pushing harder at the locked door of his mind.

He pulled out of her mind and opened his eyes to find her looking up at him, a seductive pout on her face. "Should not a door once opened be stepped through in either direction, Fireplace Man?" she murmured.

"Blimey, and people call me rude!" He pinched the bridge of his nose and rocked back on his heels. "I'm not sure what you're after here, just a peek at my mind or something… more, but whatever it is, I'm not interested."

She drew back, a frown on her face. "You are a most unusual man."

Before he could respond, he caught a sharp blast of fear from Rose. He dropped his barriers, and she sent him a quick picture of two clockwork droids, and her and Mickey strapped to tables. "No time for conversation, Reinette. I hope you'll forgive me if I leave in a hurry. If the droids ever come back, just give a shout through the fireplace."

DWDWDWDW

As Rose walked with Mickey through the corridors of the ship looking for the droid, she tried to piece together the fragments of emotion she'd picked up from the Doctor a moment ago. Somehow, the argument over Arthur had triggered… _Oh. That was a very coupley fight, wasn't it?_

"So, that Doctor, eh?" Mickey said, and the humour in his voice annoyed Rose.

"What are you talking about?" she asked.

"Well. Madame de Pompadour," he said slyly. "Sarah Jane Smith." Rose knew what he was getting at, but with her newfound confidence that the Doctor wanted her—and hadn't her world shifted a bit when she'd realised that—she ignored him.

Undeterred, Mickey tried one more. "Cleopatra."

"Cleopatra!" Rose stopped and glared at Mickey. "He mentioned her once."

"Yeah, but he called her Cleo," he tossed back over his shoulder.

Any cutting remark she might have made died on her lips when a droid stepped out of the shadows. "Mickey!" Rose raised her fire extinguisher as the droid grabbed her mate by the neck. Before she could fire it, another droid grabbed her from behind. The last thing she remembered was a prick on her neck.

When Rose woke up, she was strapped to a table. Ticking reverberated through the room, and she felt like she must be surrounded by a hundred of the droids. As the sedative wore off, she realised it was only a handful, but that was more than enough.

"What's going on? Doctor!" She called out for him verbally first, and then remembered she had another way to get his attention.

"Rose? What are you doing, Rose?" Mickey yelled when she closed her eyes.

"Shut it, I'm trying to concentrate," she ordered. Whatever they'd injected her with had left Rose with a fuzzy head, but with a little effort, she found her connection to the TARDIS, and through her, the Doctor. She dropped her shields and projected all her fear through their connection. She tried to include this image of her and Mickey strapped to examination tables while a droid watched over them both, but she had a feeling sharing actual thoughts wouldn't work unless they were touching.

"They're going to chop us up!" Mickey exclaimed. "Just like the crew. They're going to chop us up and stick us all over this stupid spaceship. And where's the Doctor? Where's the precious Doctor now?" he squeaked. "He's been gone for flippin' hours, that's where he is."

"Don't exaggerate Mickey, it hasn't been that long," Rose said offhandedly, not sure how she knew that, but knowing she was right. Mickey huffed, and Rose tamped down her frustration with him. _This was why I didn't want you to come._

Cold anger poured over her connection with the Doctor, and Rose knew he'd gotten her message. _Maybe he won't be quite so skittish about us having this now,_ she thought. _Could be dead useful being able communicate, even just with feelings._

A droid stepped forward and looked at her. "You are compatible," it declared. She looked at it and even though the mask creeped her out, she knew she had to play for time.

"Well, you might want to think about that," she said, full of bravado. "You really, really might, because me and Mickey, we didn't come here alone—" She looked over at her mate, struggling against the straps holding him down. "Oh no, and trust me, you wouldn't want to mess with our designated driver."

The droid extended its arm toward her, and an attachment with a mini saw and several sharp instruments whirred beneath Rose's nose. A rock settled in the pit of her stomach, but she kept her voice as even as possible. "Ever heard of the Daleks?" she asked, hating the breathless, fearful quality in her voice. "Remember them? They had a name for our friend. They had… myths about him, and a name. They called him the—"

Off-key singing interrupted her spiel, but she pressed on. "They called him… they called him the…"

The Doctor danced into the room with his tie around his forehead, singing "I Could Have Danced All Night." It wasn't what she had expected, but she could easily tell his intoxication was just an act, one she knew she had to play along with.

"Have you met the French?" he asked exuberantly. "My God, they know how to party!"

"Oh, look at what the cat dragged in, the Oncoming Storm," Rose said, adding a layer of disgust to her voice. If this hadn't been an act, if he'd actually waltzed in drunk while she and Mickey were in danger, she really would have had his head on a platter, so it wasn't hard for her to pull up the emotion. Still, it was gratifying to see the Doctor take a step back from her, and she had to hide her smirk.

"Hmm, you sound just like your mother," he gibed, and then her annoyance was genuine.

"What have you been doing? Where have you been?"

"Well," he said, for once not stretching the word out into multiple syllables, "among other things, I _think_ I just invented the banana daiquiri a couple of centuries early. Do you know, they'd never even seen a banana before!"

She leaned her head against the table. _Bananas. Really?_ For a moment she forgot it was an act and let him feel exactly how upset she'd be if he didn't rescue her in the next sixty seconds.

He staggered toward her and leaned on her table. "Always take a banana to a party, Rose," he told her seriously, but then he tilted his head down so she could see his eyes behind the sunglasses he wore. They were filled with fury, not with her, but at her present condition. She'd felt the anger before, but seeing it somehow reassured her.

"Bananas are good," he told Mickey over his shoulder, and then staggered back to the centre of the room.

"Oh, brilliant, it's you!" he told the droids, as if he'd just noticed their presence. "You're my favourite, you are, you're the best! Do you know why?" he said, moving closer to the droid who still held a cutting implement against Rose's chest. "Because you're so thick! You're Mr. Thick, Thick, Thickity Thick Face from Thicktown, Thickania—and so's your dad!"

Rose shifted under the blade when he turned away. _Don't leave me!_ she couldn't resist pleading silently, and he turned back immediately. The response calmed her, and he wandered back toward the TARDIS.

"Do you know what they were scanning Reinette's brain for? Her milometer. They wanna know how old she is. Know why? Because this ship is thirty-seven years old," he said, twirling in a circle and gesturing vaguely around him, "and they think when Reinette is thirty-seven, she's 'complete,' and her brain is going to be compatible." He sauntered toward another one of the droids and got in its face. "Because that's what you're missing, isn't it? The command circuit, your computer. Your ship needs a brain, and for some reason—God knows why—only the brain of Madame de Pompadour will do."

Rose eyed the droid, wondering if this could possibly be accurate. "The brain is compatible," it said.

"Compatible?" the Doctor repeated, and came back to stand behind the droid by Rose. "If you believe that, then you could use a glass of wine."

She watched in amazement as he pulled the wig back and poured the contents of the glass over the gear head. The droid froze and then tipped over, out of service.

Rose heaved a sigh and flopped back against the table. "Multi-grade anti-oil," the Doctor said. "If it moves, it doesn't." The rest of the droids closed in on him, and he leapt over to the command station, turning them all off.

"Right you two, that's enough lying about," he told Rose and Mickey, using the sonic to get them both off the tables.

He helped Rose up, and as she got her bearings, he said quietly, "Got here as soon as I could. I had to find the anti-oil first—showing up without a weapon wouldn't have done much good."

She smiled up at him, rubbing at the sore spots on her arms. "No worries, Doctor. All my parts are still attached; you were in time."

"In time!" Mickey squawked. "I don't know what you're talking about, Rose. Another few minutes and—"

Rose clenched her fists and then forced herself to relax. "Right, Mickey. Another few minutes. Which means he was in time."

"Anyway," the Doctor said, clearing his throat. "It's time we got the rest of the ship turned off."

"Are those things safe?" Mickey asked.

"Yep. Safe, safe and thick, the way I like them."

The Doctor shoved the sunglasses back in his pocket and peered at the screens. "Okay, all the time windows are controlled from here. We need to close them all down." He felt in his pockets for something. "Zeus plugs. Where are my Zeus plugs? I had them a minute ago; I was going to use them as castanets."

Rose watched him dart around the flight deck, a question occurring to her. "Why didn't they just open a time window to when she was thirty-seven?"

"With all the damage to these circuits, they did well to hit the right century," the Doctor explained, running something along a circuit board. "It was trial and error after that." He flicked a switch, then flicked it back. "The windows aren't closing. Why won't they close?"

Something like a timer dinged, and Rose looked at the Doctor. "What was that?"

"I don't know," he said, glancing around the room. "Incoming message?"

"From who?" Mickey asked.

"Report from the field. One of them must still be out there, with Reinette. That's why I can't close the windows; there's an override."

The droids on the flight deck all woke up suddenly. The one the Doctor had knocked out with anti-oil excreted it from its hand, letting the fluid run down its sleeve and onto the Doctor's shoe.

"Well that was a bit clever," the Doctor muttered. Then the rest of the droids straightened up, and he gulped. "All right. Many things about this are not good." The sound chimed again, and he called out to them. "Message from one of your little friends, say anything interesting?"

"She is complete," the head droid said. "It begins." As one, they hit their teleports and disappeared.

The three of them looked around the now empty room. "What's happening?" Rose asked.

"One of them must have found the right time window," the Doctor answered. "Now it's time to send in the troops. And this time, they're bringing back her head."


	10. Chapter 10

**Previously:**

"She is complete," the head droid said. "It begins." As one, they hit their teleports and disappeared.

The three of them looked around the now empty room. "What's happening?" Rose asked.

"One of them must have found the right time window," the Doctor answered. "Now it's time to send in the troops. And this time, they're bringing back her head."

**Chapter Ten**

Dizziness swept over Rose, and she grabbed at the computer console to stay upright. She didn't know Reinette, but the thought of letting her die was painful. "Can you find the right window?" she asked. "We've gotta save her."

The Doctor nodded, screwdriver already out and aimed at the console. "Now that I know what I'm looking for, it'll be easy-peasy. Clockwork droids might not be able to find the right window on the first go, but I'm a Time Lord."

For once, his arrogant declaration filled her with relief instead of aggravation. "Great, just hurry," she said, putting a hand to her head as her vision started to grey out.

"Found it." He adjusted the sonic's screwdriver and Reinette's voice filled the room. "Fireplace Man! I need you now; you promised."

"Is that coming from the time window?" Rose asked. "Why can't we see it?"

The Doctor's posture went completely stiff, from his locked knees to the tight, corded muscles in his neck. He adjusted the sonic again, and a large window appeared on the wall in front of them. "Right in front of us the whole time," Rose muttered.

On the other side of the window, a French masquerade ball had turned into a horrible parody of the real thing as clockwork droids marched through the guests, throwing them aside willy-nilly in their eagerness to reach Reinette.

Rose felt the frantic working of the Doctor's mind as he looked for a solution. The more Reinette called for him, the worse he felt, and the dizzier Rose became.

"So let's go through and save her."

The Doctor shook his head, his lips pressed into a thin line. He ran around the terminals, waving his sonic frantically at various connection points. "They knew I was coming; they've blocked it off."

_But the droids weren't ever able to land that accurately before. _"I don't get it; how come they got in there?" Rose asked.

"They teleported!" the Doctor said, using a spanner to fix connections on one of the terminals. "You saw them. As long as the ship and the ballroom were linked, short range teleports will do the trick."

"Oh, we'll go in the TARDIS!" Rose suggested, feeling just as anxious as the Doctor.

"Can't take the TARDIS, we're part of events now!"

Rose raised an eyebrow, feeling like they'd used the TARDIS before to land them closer to where they needed to be, but it was his ship.

The Doctor shook his head, knowing exactly what Rose was thinking. There was a reason he couldn't take the TARDIS; by the time he got the coordinates set, events would have progressed to their ultimate end on the other side of the window. Since the ship the TARDIS was on was linked to the ballroom via the windows, they wouldn't be able to go back and fix it without crossing their own timelines.

He scanned the ship's systems, hoping they would tell him something other than what he'd already figured out. The droids had teleported to Reinette, age thirty-seven, and then they'd cut the link between the ship and the windows. They would let him watch as they destroyed her, but they would not let him come to her rescue.

"Can't we just smash through?" Mickey asked.

"Hyperplex this side, plate glass the other. You'd need a truck to get through that glass," he told Mickey and ran to another part of the controls.

"We don't have a truck."

"I know we don't have a truck!" The Doctor shoved his hands in his hair. Timelines were disintegrating around him. Reinette, Louis XV, France in the eighteenth century... everything was changing, and he didn't have a way to keep it from happening.

"Well we've got to try something!" Rose exclaimed.

"No, smash the glass, smash the time windows—there'd be no way back." No matter how uncomfortable it felt to be completely exposed to Rose, he still wouldn't leave her.

He tried using the sonic to reopen the windows, but nothing worked. In France, Reinette was using her considerable power to calm her court, but he knew she was only maintaining her own calm because she believed her childhood imaginary friend would come to save her once more.

Rose gasped in horror. "Doctor. They've got her on her knees. I think... I think they're gonna behead her. They don't need her feet, they said—just her brain."

The shifted timeline grew stronger. The Doctor vaulted over the terminal and stared at the window, hopelessness clawing at his gut.

Rose slipped her hand into his. "Doctor, you've got to save her! It isn't supposed to happen like this."

He looked at Rose quickly, noticing for the first time that the queasiness in his mind wasn't all his own. _Is she... sensing timelines?_

Whatever the answer, she was right. It couldn't happen like this, but what could he do? In truth, there was only one answer, but he still rebelled against it.

"Going through the glass is the only way, yeah?"

He looked at the window and then back at her. "Yes," he said, unable to lie.

"Stay here, I know what we need." He watched in bemusement as she disappeared down a corridor, but when she returned a minute later with Arthur, he knew what her plan was.

"Rose, if I break the glass…"

Rose's hair drifted around her face as she shook her head. "Doctor, I don't know why, but I know she can't die, not right here. It's… there's more that has to happen, yeah?"

He gulped. Definitely sensing timelines then. _No time for that now._ "Yeah. Well, not her... but yeah."

"Then go."

He took the reins and swung up on the horse. Mickey looked on in horror. "Rose, what are you doing? You're gonna let him just leave us here?"

"Oh, and there's Ricky the Idiot! You think I'd leave Rose stranded on a spaceship in the fifty-first century?"

He looked back at Rose. "I'll find a way to get back. I promise."

She smiled, but he could easily feel her discomfort over their connection. His concern for her was now equal to his concern for the woman in eighteenth century France, but he obeyed her wishes and kicked the horse into motion.

Arthur ran full steam, straight at the window. At the last second the Doctor ducked his head, protecting his face from the glass with his arms. A moment later, he felt the horse land and he looked up; they were in the ballroom. He couldn't help a glance over his shoulder. The window was broken, like he knew it would be. Worse, he could tell immediately that his connection with Rose and the TARDIS was just as broken, separated as they now were by time and space.

Wheeling Arthur around, he focused on the droids and not the emptiness in his head. Reinette looked at him with stars in her eyes, and he smiled back at her. "Madame de Pompadour, you look younger every day."

"What the hell is going on?" King Louis XV asked.

Reinette blinked. "Oh. This is my lover, the King of France."

"Hello, Your Majesty," he said, then stared at the droids. "I'm the Doctor, and I'm here to fix the clock." He yanked the mask and wig off the nearest one.

The droid held out its sharp appendage, and the Doctor sneered at it. "Forget it, it's over. For you and for me," he said, looking again at the broken mirror. The emptiness in his mind ate at him. "Talk about seven years bad luck. Try three thousand."

The droid looked too, and the Doctor saw the exact moment his clockwork brain worked out the consequences of what had happened. It hit its teleport over and over, trying to find the connection to the ship.

"The link with the ship is broken. There's no way back." He leaned closer and whispered in a mocking tone, "You don't have the parts."

The gears slowed, and the Doctor took all his anxiety over getting back to Rose out on it. "How many ticks left in that clockwork heart? A day? An hour? It's over. Accept that. I'm not winding you up," he said, finally delivering the pun he'd been dying to use.

The ticking slowed even further, and then the droid's head drooped toward its chest. Around the room, the rest of the cadre also slowed and then tipped over, their gears stopping. A droid dressed in a vibrant purple coat fell backward, the impact with the ballroom floor causing his pieces to break and scatter around him.

The proper timeline snapped back into place. Reinette would stay with the King of France, who would not be killed by clockwork droids. His son would still be the ineffectual Louis XVI, whose reign would lead to the French Revolution.

"Are you all right?" the Doctor asked Reinette, helping her to her feet.

"What's happened to them?" she asked, looking around the room at the now defunct droids.

"They've stopped. They have no purpose anymore."

"I suppose you will be going," Reinette said stiffly.

The Doctor looked over his shoulder at the broken mirror. "It won't be as easy as just… getting back on the horse and riding back to where I came from," he told her. "It may be hard to understand, but that mirror was my only doorway home."

"In saving me, you trapped yourself," she said slowly. "Did you know that would happen?"

He shrugged and swallowed hard. He wasn't quite trapped. All he had to do was locate a version of himself who could take him back to his own timeline, but a quick scan of his memories told him it would be decades before he accidentally took Susan, Ian, and Barbara to the French Revolution.

He would be forced to take the slow path, the bane of a time traveler's existence.

"And yet you came."

"Yeah, I did. Catch me doing that again," he muttered, all the while knowing that if timelines were in danger, he would never have a choice.

Judging by the look on her face, he hadn't fooled her. "There were many doors between my world and yours," she said. "Can't you use one of the others?"

He shook his head. "When the mirror broke, the shock would have severed all the links with the—with my home," he quickly corrected. "There will be a few more broken mirrors and torn tapestries around here, I'm afraid. Wherever there was a time window. Um, I'll pay for any damage," he offered.

_And how am I going to do that?_ The full ramifications of his long exile on Earth struck him. "Ah, that's a thought—I'm going to need money! I've always been sort of vague about money. Where do you get money?" he asked, feeling lost.

She laughed, and then an edge of calculation entered her eyes. A moment later, she grabbed his hand and pulled him down another corridor. "It's a pity," she said as they passed gaping courtiers, "I think I would have enjoyed showing you how we mere mortals live."

"I'm not going anywhere." _At least not before you're long dead._

She pushed open a door and he nearly tripped when he realised it was her bedroom. "Oh, aren't you?" she cooed, pointing, and he choked before he realised she wasn't pointing to the bed, but to the fireplace.

"It's not a copy," she told him. "It's the original. I had it moved here, and was exact in every detail."

The unspoken meaning hung in the air. She'd trusted, all these years, that he would return at the end to save her from the droids.

"The fireplace!" he said, striding toward it, his steps getting quicker as he felt himself being pulled back to Rose. "The fireplace from your bedroom."

"It appears undamaged," she said, coming up to stand behind him. "Do you think it will still work?"

The Doctor stared at the fireplace, not quite able to believe he was so close to home, to the TARDIS and Rose. "You broke the bond with the ship when you moved it. Which means, it was offline when the mirror broke. That's what saved it," he told her, and then his mind caught up with what he was saying.

"But!" He stepped toward it, almost afraid to hope. "The link is basically physical, and it's still physically here." He ran his hand over the mantle. "Which might just mean, if I'm lucky," he rapped on it a few times, "if I'm very, very, very, very lucky…"

In the same place he'd noted the faulty connection before, the knock revealed a hollow sound. Exultation swept over him. "Hah!" he exclaimed, looking at Reinette and pulling out his sonic.

"What?" she asked.

"Loose connection!" he crowed, pointing the sonic at it. "Need to get a man in," he added, pounding on top of the mantle to hopefully jar the wiring back into place. The mechanism hummed as it turned back on.

"Will I ever see you again, Doctor?" Reinette asked.

"I expect not," he said honestly.

"Then I shall say goodbye, and thank you for saving my life so many times."

"Reinette, it was my pleasure," he said sincerely. "Wish me luck." He pulled the lever and the fireplace turned around.

As soon as he returned to the fifty-first century, the TARDIS bombarded him with a mental Howler, accusing him of abandoning Rose—Mickey too, though she seemed less fussed about that. _Whoa! I always planned to come back._

She pointed out the fast return button, the one he'd never gotten around to showing Rose. Then she showed him a picture of Rose piloting the ship, and bluntly suggested she preferred the human girl's style to his own.

The Doctor ignored the insult, and the hint that he ought to teach Rose more about the ship. With all the jumping between timelines, he couldn't tell how long he'd been gone, but from the way the TARDIS was going on, it must have been a while. Strangely though, he didn't feel any anxiety from Rose.

"Rose!" He ran toward the flight deck, hoping she'd be there. "Rose!"

"Back by the TARDIS, Doctor!" she yelled back.

He had her in his arms a moment later. "How long did you wait?" he asked, trying to hold back his frantic concern as much as possible.

"Five and a half hours."

He couldn't help feeling a shot of remorse that he knew she picked up on—five and a half hours wasn't long in the grand scheme of the universe, but it was long enough to foster doubt. But all he sensed from Rose was trust.

He pulled back from the hug, a manic grin in place to hide what he was thinking. "Right. Always wait five and a half hours," he said, cringing even as the words came out of his mouth.

"Where's Mr. Mickey?" he rushed on.

Rose opened the TARDIS door. "Pouting somewhere. He didn't think you'd find a way back, wanted to me to fly the TARDIS home." Her disdain told him exactly what she'd thought of that idea.

The Doctor shrugged off his coat and tossed it over a pillar. "You could have, you know," he said, striving for a nonchalance he didn't feel. "The TARDIS loves you; she'd have helped you get home."

Rose scoffed. "What, and leave you stranded in France, or on a spaceship drifting in the fifty-first century? Not gonna happen Doctor. I'm never gonna leave you. Besides, I knew you'd get back somehow."

A million arguments rose to the Doctor's mind; she couldn't continue to just believe in him like that, he'd let her down one day and she wouldn't be prepared. But when he opened his mouth to tell her that, the smile on her face stole his words. "Well, it all worked out in the end," he said, somewhat lamely. "I'm going to take us into the Vortex, then I think we'll drift for a bit. Why don't you go make some tea?"

Rose glanced over her shoulder at the Doctor as she left the control room. The pinched look around his eyes matched the tension she sensed from him, and she got the distinct feeling that he'd suggested tea to get her out of the room.

She shook the feeling off with a laugh. Tea after an adventure was their routine—save the world, have a cuppa. Besides, the way he'd just hugged her wasn't usually how he acted when he was about to turn broody on her.

In the galley, Rose filled the kettle with fresh water and turned it on, her body performing the familiar tasks while her mind strayed back to the ship, but not to France and Reinette. _I've never gotten dizzy like that before_. The kettle boiled and she absently warmed the pot and then poured water over the tea.

Her fingers tapped an uneven rhythm on the worktop, her mind going over her moments of dizziness. She knew why it had happened—the fact that events were happening that shouldn't had been as clear as day to her. What she didn't understand was _how._

Rose pulled two mugs out of the cabinet, then grabbed a third for Mickey as an afterthought. He still hadn't come out of wherever he'd retreated to, even though he could surely tell the TARDIS had dematerialised.

Into one cup went one sugar and lots of milk. In the other went a splash of milk and four sugars. She poured the tea and took both cups with her back to the control room.

The corridor lights behind her flashed, and Rose glanced over her shoulder. _That way?_ she asked the ship, and the lights flashed again in an affirmative. She followed the ship's guidance until she stood in front of the study door. She carefully manoeuvred the cups until she held them both in one hand, then put the other on the doorknob.

Before she could get it open, she caught the faintest hint of emotion from the Doctor—fear maybe? Claustrophobia?

The lights flashed again, encouraging her to enter the room, but she hesitated, focusing instead on the Doctor. Suddenly she realised the ship was muting his emotions. What she'd gotten as a faint hint was actually an overpowering need to be alone.

She turned back the way she'd come. _What were you up to?_ If ships could pout, the TARDIS was doing so now. _I'm not gonna push him,_ she insisted. _When he wants to talk, then…_

Then she remembered all the questions she'd wanted to ask. Why had she gotten dizzy? She knew the Doctor had cottoned on to that; why wouldn't he explain?

She shoved the hurt down. Maybe he didn't know how to explain it to her. Back in the kitchen she dumped his tea into the sink and poured one for Mickey instead. It wasn't hard to guess where he was; she heard the noise of the telly coming from the media room.

"Hey," she said, holding out his cup.

He didn't take it, or even look her in the eye. "So the Doctor finally turned up then?"

"Yeah, I told you he wouldn't abandon us."

Mickey glared at her. "How can you know that, Rose? How can you trust him like that?"

"Because I know him, Mickey," she retorted. "I've traveled with him for two years now, and he's never left me behind."

"No, but he sent you home once. Alone. And he went to France. Alone. Don't you see, babe? He's always gonna think he can handle everything by himself."

"And it's my job to remind him that he can't," she retorted. "Now, are you gonna drink your tea, or should I just leave?"

Mickey turned back to the telly and crossed his arms across his chest. Rose stared at him in disbelief; she knew his anger stemmed from resentment that she'd chosen the Doctor over him, and she suddenly felt a twinge of remorse. Not for choosing the life she had, but for leaving Mickey the way she had. They had officially broken up during the long Christmas holiday, but apparently there was still some anger.

She set the tea down on the table and sat down on the other end of the sofa. "Hey. Micks." A beat passed, and he finally looked at her.

"He left us, Rose. He sent us back to the ship by ourselves and we got knocked out by those droids, and then he let us sit on those tables about to be cut up while he was doing whatever with some high and mighty French mistress. Why can't you see that you can't count on him?"

The words struck Rose, but not in the way Mickey intended. Ever since Rome and her stint as a statue of the goddess Fortuna, he'd been eager to blame the Doctor for everything that went wrong. Rose knew the Doctor would always do everything in his power to keep her safe, but… Her mind drifted back to the closed door and the distance it represented.

_You sure this isn't going to drive him away?_ she asked the TARDIS, only feeling a little reassured by the ship's confidence.

Before her fear showed up on her face (or worse, before the Doctor could pick up on it) Rose shoved it into the recesses of her mind. "He didn't send us away, Mickey. We split up to cover more ground, and you and I got captured. That happens sometimes. No normal days with the Doctor, remember?"

"Yeah, but…"

"No, Mickey. M'not gonna let you tell me all the reasons I should be angry that he did his job. 'Cause going around, risking his life to save people? That's what he does. It's what _we _do—and I love it."

Rose stood up, suddenly weary of being caught between the two angsting men. "Drink your tea before it gets cold."

Mickey caught her arm as she walked by. "Hey, I'm sorry, Rose. Don't leave—it's not so fun to be alone in here."

There was true apology in his face. "No more jabs at the Doctor?"

"Promise."

She sat back down next to him. "Okay then, Mickey, let me introduce you to the wonders of intergalactic cable."


	11. Chapter 11

In the sky above London, a strange orb broke through the Earth's atmosphere. The only building in the vicinity happened to house the secretive Torchwood Institute, which immediately took possession of the ship.

As Torchwood began their tests, the ramifications of this event rippled through the multiverse. Tiny cracks in the walls between the worlds began to appear, and in the Vortex, the TARDIS saw what that meant. A year into the future was hardly a drop in the bucket for the ancient ship, and she could easily see two kinds of metal creatures bent on destroying the planet her human called home.

She saw her Time Lord trying to save them all, and she knew he would fail without help. The TARDIS scanned the universes for the perfect partners, and when she found them, she pushed herself through a crack to get to them.


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

For a week after France, Rose hardly saw hide nor hair of the Doctor. There were dishes in the dish rack so she knew he was eating, and occasionally she caught sight of his legs sticking out from underneath the console.

She ignored the TARDIS' attempts to help her find the Doctor. If he wanted to talk, he would stop hiding. It was harder to ignore Mickey's comments, which grew more pointed and satisfied by the day.

Finally on the fifth morning over breakfast, Mickey leaned back in his chair, a grin on his face. "I guess you're right, Rose. The Doctor won't just leave you. I mean, he's been here so much recently I've hardly gotten a chance to talk to you."

Rose glared at him. "Mickey, there's stuff you can't even understand. The Doctor an' me…" She stopped, not wanting to tell Mickey exactly why the Doctor had made himself scarce.

_And be honest, you're not exactly pleased with him either,_ she admitted to herself. She still had questions she wanted to ask, and she couldn't very well do that if he refused to stay in the same room with her.

"No, go on Rose," Mickey urged. "I'd love to hear your excuse for this. Because I mean, to me it looks like he's trying to avoid you, but clearly there's something I don't know."

Rose stood up so quickly her chair would have tipped backwards if Mickey hadn't caught it. "You know what, Mickey?" she said as she dropped her dishes in the sink. "I think I'd like the day to myself. You know where the media room is, and it's not like watching football isn't more important to you than I am anyway."

He tried to protest, but she held a hand up. "No, I don't wanna hear it. I've been listening to you for days, and I'm done. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

It was only after she left that she realised she didn't actually have any plans on how to spend the day. The TARDIS highlighted the strange moments of dizziness when they were helping Reinette, and she knew what the ship wanted her to do.

_Right. If I just ask about this and pretend he hasn't been ignoring me for a week, he can't say I'm being nosy or invasive. After all, this is about me, right?_

She straightened her shoulders and turned toward the console room, finally determined to talk to him—whether he wanted to see her or not. Making the decision proved to be easier than locating him though. She wasn't surprised when he wasn't in the console room or the library, or even his study. But when she started following the corridors and opening every door she came to and she still didn't find him, she wondered if he was somehow actively avoiding her.

_Right Rose, and how would he be doing that? _she scoffed. _He can sense your emotions, he doesn't have a radar setting on the sonic that tells him where you are. _The idea of being able to punch "The Doctor" into her sat nav amused her and relieved some of her frustration.

Still, this obviously wasn't the day she'd be able to talk to him. At 10:00, she gave it up as a bad job, ate a late supper, and turned in—resolving to try again the next day.

DWDWDWDWDW

The Doctor drew a breath when he finally sensed Rose go to sleep just before 1:00 in the morning. He wasn't proud of the lengths he'd gone to today to avoid her—tracking someone's biodata was usually used to find them, not to stay away from them. But he'd picked up on her determination that morning and, well, he'd panicked. What if she wanted to talk about their relationship?

Humans were so amazing in the way they just grabbed onto life and accepted the pain along with the beauty. When you only lived for a handful of decades, you didn't have much choice but to make the most of every moment. He knew what Rose would say in response to his reasoning for them not to be together, if he gave her a chance. _Doctor, shouldn't we take the opportunity to be happy now while we can?_

But Rose wouldn't have to watch him die. Rose wouldn't have to face centuries with only the memory of him to carry her through. He knew he wouldn't be able to do it, but he didn't know if he could make her understand. Better to just stay away for a bit, until things settled down.

However, a full day of darting around the TARDIS and never setting foot in the galley had left him hungry, and now that Rose was in bed, he could safely get something to eat. But when he pushed the door open, Mickey was sitting at the table, his arms folded across his chest. "I've been waiting for you," he said.

The Doctor gulped. "Have you? I've been thinking of all the places we could go next. Let's go get Rose and see what she wants to do."

He half-turned back toward the door, but Mickey's voice stopped him. "I'm not going anywhere until you and I have a little talk."

"Talk, Mickey? That's all I ever do."

"You talk, and you leave." The Doctor opened his mouth to argue, but Mickey held his hand up. "I'm not talking about the spaceship. I know Rose told you to go, and believe me, I've had words with her on that."

The Doctor had a sinking feeling that this was exactly the kind of conversation he'd tried so hard to avoid. "I'm talking about emotionally," Mickey continued. "You just… check out when it gets to be too much."

"Oi! I don't either!"

Mickey raised an eyebrow. "Then explain Sarah Jane. I heard that conversation, Doctor—you didn't argue when she said you could have come back. So why didn't you?"

The Doctor leaned against the cabinets and glared balefully at Mickey. "I don't need to explain myself to you."

Mickey snorted. "You didn't even have the courage to tell her to her face that you wanted her to go. You just waited for an excuse to dump her. That call back to Gallifrey sure was convenient, wasn't it?"

Anger boiled up inside the Doctor. "Blimey, you really were eavesdropping, weren't you?"

"I wanted to make sure you weren't planning to do the same thing to Rose," Mickey countered. "And you know what? I'm not exactly reassured."

All his anger drained away. "I'm not going to abandon Rose," he muttered.

"You don't get it," Mickey said. "You already have. Oh, you're here, but you haven't talked to her all week."

The all too familiar feeling of shame welled up inside the Doctor. Mickey didn't know the worst of it. He thought back to his actions that day, and bile rose in his throat.

"Things between Rose and I are complicated," he countered, trying to regain the upper hand in the conversation.

Mickey raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, that's what she said this morning."

The Doctor's stomach churned; after the way he'd been treating her, Rose had still defended him. That was…

"Look, I don't know what friendship means for Time Lords," Mickey said when the Doctor kept quiet, "but for humans, it means we don't leave the other person to make excuses for us all the time. Rose deserves better. And if you don't want me to convince her of that, you'd better start talking to her again."

The fear of losing Rose stole the Doctor's ability to speak, and he watched mutely as Mickey walked out of the galley.

The next morning the Doctor skipped breakfast and went to the console room and started tinkering. He knew Mickey probably wouldn't see this as progress, but just being present where Rose could find him made him nervous enough. At least if he was under the console, he wasn't quite as exposed.

The TARDIS wasn't taken in by his paltry attempt to hide from both of his companions, and she sent a jolt of electricity into his hand. His spanner clattered to the grating and the Doctor cursed in every language he knew, plus a few he made up on the fly. "What'd you do that for?" he growled at the TARDIS.

She forcefully reminded him of the two things he was trying to forget: Rose's apparent ability to sense timelines and her death on the Game Station. The point was clear—_you need to tell her._

The Doctor snorted. "Right, and how do I open that conversation? 'Rose, do you remember when you opened up the TARDIS and saved my life? Well, guess what? It killed you.' I'm sure that would go over well."

The ship rocked violently and the Doctor fell to the floor. "Would you stop that?" he demanded as he stood back up. "Besides, why are you forcing the conversation anyway?"

This time, there was a distinct feeling that she was rolling her eyes at him.

Before he could question the ship on that, Rose herself jogged into the console room, Mickey on her heels. "What's going on?" she asked, stroking a piece of the TARDIS. "Why's she pitching about like that?"

The Doctor rubbed at the back of his neck. "Just having a bit of disagreement on where we should go, her and I," he said.

Before anyone could reply, the Time Rotor exploded in a shower of sparks and the TARDIS started a free fall out of the Vortex, knocking him down. He pulled himself to his feet and stared at the readings on the monitor, unable to believe what he saw.

Rose joined him, differences momentarily forgotten in concern for the TARDIS. "What happened?" she asked.

"The Time Vortex, it's gone. That's impossible, it's just gone!" The most immediate meaning of this struck him, and he said, "Brace yourself! We're going to crash!"

Tucking Rose under one arm, he grabbed onto the railing with the other hand. Their free fall ended in a hard thud that knocked him and Rose to the grating and sent several bits of the TARDIS flying through the air. "You all right?" he asked Rose, running his hands down her arms and checking for any visible injuries.

She nodded. "Mickey!" he called out.

"I'm fine, I'm all right! Sorry… yeah."

_No one hurt, good. No one but…_ He rose to his feet unsteadily and looked at the smoke up out of the dark console. "She's dead. The TARDIS is dead."

"Is that why…" Rose asked, and he glanced over to see her pointing at her head.

The Doctor blinked. He could still feel Rose's telepathic signature at the edge of his awareness, but that was it. The pain from losing the TARDIS—that was all his. "Yeah, no TARDIS, no connection," he said quietly, and he relaxed in Rose's presence for the first time in days_._

"You can fix it," Rose suggested, fear not quite hidden in her voice.

"There's nothing to fix. She's perished." He flicked a few switches on the console and got no response, not even the faintest hum in his mind. "The last TARDIS in the universe, extinct."

He dodged a part dangling from the ceiling. Grief tried to claim him and pull him down as those words came out of his mouth. The last TARDIS, the only other survivor from Gallifrey. His closest companion for almost 1000 years, the one who knew him best…

"We can get help, yeah?" Rose asked, this time not hiding the fear at all.

"Where from?" he asked.

Rose looked at the console and back at him. "Well, we've landed. We've got to be somewhere."

Behind them, Mickey moved toward the door, but the Doctor focused on Rose. "We fell out of the Vortex, through the Void, into nothingness." He swallowed hard, realising this meant he had no way to take her home. "We're in some sort of no place… the silent realm… the lost dimension."

"Otherwise known as London," Mickey called from the door, laughter in his voice.

The Doctor straightened up and looked at the light streaming in through the open door. Rose followed, and after grabbing his coat, he exited the TARDIS.

Mickey led the way outside and bounced lightly on the grass. "London, England, Earth," he said, jubilation in his voice.

_There's still something not right,_ the Doctor thought, sticking his tongue out slightly and tasting the air. It looked like London, but didn't taste like it. _Doesn't sound like it either,_ he thought, taking in the constant mechanical hum.

"Hold on," Mickey said, picking up a newspaper from a park bench. "First of February this year, not exactly far-flung, is it?"

The Doctor stared across the Thames. He'd found the source of the humming. "So this is London," he said when Mickey finished showing off.

"Yup."

"Your city," he continued, turning in a circle. They'd crashed in front of what looked like Lambeth Palace. _Gingerbread house._

"That's the one."

"Just as we left it."

"Bang on."

"And that includes the zeppelins?" the Doctor asked, looking up at the sky.

Finally, Rose and Mickey truly looked around them. Across the river, the Palace of Westminster dominated the skyline, just like it did at home. But whereas in their universe, the airspace above it was clear of all craft, in this London, zeppelin traffic crisscrossed over the city.

"What the hell?" Mickey muttered, lowering the paper in shock.

"It's beautiful," Rose breathed, and for once her ability to see the positive in every situation did not make the Doctor smile.

"Okay," Mickey said, trying to regain his composure, "so it's London with the big international zeppelin festival."

The Doctor didn't even dignify that with a reply. "This is not your world."

"But if the date's the same… It's parallel, right?" Mickey said, excitement in his voice. "Am I right? Like a parallel Earth where they've got zeppelins. Am I right? I'm right, aren't I?"

"Must be," the Doctor said, but he felt no excitement. Unlike his companions, he knew exactly what a parallel world meant. This was why the TARDIS was dead. It was the Time Vortex at her heart that allowed her to travel anywhere in space and time. On the other side of the void, she couldn't reach the Vortex. No Vortex, no life… and no getting home.

Rose stepped out in front of them. "A parallel world where—"

"Oh, come on," Mickey interrupted. "You've seen it on films. Like an alternative to our world where everything the same but a little bit different, like, I don't know, traffic lights are blue, Tony Blair never got elected."

Rose took another step forward, and the Doctor detected a faint tremor in her body. "And he's still alive," she said, staring at an advertisement right in front of them.

The Doctor's hearts dropped even farther when he recognised the man promoting a health drink: Pete Tyler, the man who meant so much to Rose she'd been willing to break the laws of time just to save his life.

"A parallel world where my dad's still alive."

She walked quickly toward the billboard, and the Doctor followed her. He automatically reached for their connection, looking for any clue as to what she was thinking, and huffed in annoyance when he remembered it was gone.

But still, two years of learning all her nonverbal cues hadn't been forgotten. The hope in her eyes startled a different emotion from him—fear. "Don't look at it Rose," he instructed, speaking quickly. "Don't even think about it. This is not your world."

"It's my dad," she murmured, and he heard the same lost girl looking for her daddy that had convinced him to take her back to see him the first time. But this time, he would be stronger. He wouldn't give in to that voice.

Rose reached out for the advert, and it came to life. "Trust me on this," Pete Tyler said.

Rose recoiled a little. "Well that's weird," she muttered. "But he's real," she added with a smile. "He's a success! He was always planning these daft little schemes, health food drinks and stuff. Everyone said they were useless. But he did it."

The Doctor put himself between Rose and the advertisement, his hands on her arms. "Rose if you've ever trusted me, then listen to me now."

She glanced at it again, and he wished she could feel exactly how serious this was. _Of course the moment that connection could actually be useful, we lose it_.

He shook her just enough to get her attention. "Stop looking at it! Your father's dead. He died when you were six months old. That is not your Pete. That is _a _Pete. For all we know, he's got his own Jackie, his own Rose." Mickey huffed in annoyance, but the Doctor ignored him. This was not a time for gentleness. "His own daughter who is someone else, but not you. You can't see him. Not ever."

She half nodded, but the set of her jaw told a different story. Mickey pulled her into a hug and she buried her head into his chest. Over the top of her head, the other man glared at him, but the Doctor refused to be swayed. If they stayed, if they met Pete… Timelines shimmered in and out of view, like mirages in the desert. It couldn't happen. He couldn't lose her, not like this.

"Keep an eye on her," he mouthed and Mickey nodded.

The Doctor spun on his heel, retreating back into the TARDIS. With danger lurking just beyond what he could see, it was down to him to get them off this planet at the very least. _The TARDIS is dead, but maybe there's something he could do._

The smoke had cleared, but the Time Rotor was still dark. He stared at it anyway, hoping the solution would just jump out at him. Behind him, the door opened and closed, and he turned around to see not Rose, as he'd hoped, but Mickey.

"I told you to keep an eye on her!"

Mickey shrugged. "She's all right."

But the shimmering timelines were becoming clearer. The longer Rose was alone here, the stronger the possibility that he would lose her. "If she goes wandering off—parallel world, it's like a gingerbread house!" he said, pointing at the door. "All those temptations, calling her."

Anger flared in Mickey's eyes. "Oh, so it's just Rose then—nothing out there to tempt me."

"Well I don't know," the Doctor retorted. "I can't worry about everything." He glared at the console. "If I could just get this thing to work," he said, kicking at it. He regretted it immediately, not just because of the sharp pain in his foot, but because the lack of reaction from the TARDIS was just one more reminder that his ship was dead.

"Does that help?" Mickey asked.

"Yes."

"Does it hurt?"

"Yes," he admitted, sitting down and rubbing at his sore toe.

Mickey fiddled with a few dials on the console. "So what's so wrong with us being in a parallel world anyway?"

The unnatural stillness of the TARDIS drained the Doctor's energy and anger, and he sagged back against the coral strut. "We're not meant to be here," he explained. "The TARDIS takes its power from the universe, but it's the wrong universe. It's like diesel in a petrol engine."

Gear head that he was, Mickey understood that analogy instantly, and he sat down beside the Doctor. "But I've seen it in comics," he protested. "People are hopping from one alternative world to another, it's easy!"

The Doctor crossed his arms. _If I had 5p for every time someone argued with me based on something they'd read in books or seen on the telly…_ "Not in the real world."

Honesty forced him to continue. "Used to be easy," he admitted, tipping his head back as he remembered what it had been like before the Time War. "When the Time Lords kept their eye on everything, you could pop between realities, home in time for tea. Then they died and took it all with them." Would Rose be one more casualty of that moment when he'd ended it all?

He shoved the guilt away. "The walls of reality closed," he explained to Mickey. "The worlds were sealed. Everything became that bit less kind."

"Then how did we get here?" Mickey asked, finally voicing the question of the day.

The Doctor rubbed at his eyes, weariness setting in. "I don't know. Accident? Should have been impossible; now we're trapped."

They sat side by side for another moment, just two men a long way from home. Then something under the grating caught the Doctor's eye—something that looked like a light glowing far down in the TARDIS's inner workings.

"What's that?" he asked and got to his feet. He tried to clamp down tight on the hope threatening to bubble over, but when he looked around, he couldn't see anywhere the light could be reflecting from.

"What?" Mickey asked.

"That, there. Is that a reflection?" He looked around again and still saw nothing. "It's a light!" He got down on the floor and yanked the grating up. "Is it? Is that a light?"

Hope soared through him. Light meant life. "I think that's a light! That's what we need. We've got power. Mickey, we've got power!" he exclaimed, bending back down on the floor and reaching his hand toward the working power cell.

_Too far to reach from here._ He lowered himself under the deck and started pulling bits and bobs out. "It's alive!" he said again, unable to believe it. The TARDIS wasn't dead after all. They weren't stuck. He could get Rose home, and she wouldn't be trapped in a parallel universe.

"What is it?" Mickey asked.

"Nothing. It's tiny. One of those insignificant little power cells that no one ever bothers about, and it's clinging onto life, with one little ounce of reality tucked away inside." He tossed hoses over his shoulder and gently pulled the power cell up. It pulsed slightly when he touched it, and he felt the faintest hum of the TARDIS in his mind.

"Is it enough to get us home?" Mickey asked.

"Not yet," the Doctor said, cupping it in his hands. "I need to charge it up."

"We could go outside and lash it onto the national grid," Mickey suggested eagerly.

"Wrong sort of energy," the Doctor answered. "Gotta come from our universe."

"But we don't have anything," Mickey pointed out, his brow furrowed with worry.

The Doctor looked up at him. "There's me," he answered, and blew on the power cell. He felt lightheaded for a moment as energy drained out of his body, and then the TARDIS cell glowed brighter and he grinned manically. "I just gave away ten years of my life. Worth every second!"

Mickey crouched down and looked at it. "It's going out, is that okay?"

"It's on a recharging cycle," the Doctor told him. "It'll loop round, power back up, and be ready to take us home in—ooh, twenty four hours?" Unable to help himself, he kissed the bit of TARDIS in his glee. He could get them out of here; he could save Rose from whatever danger was hiding in this parallel universe.

"So that gives us twenty four hours in a parallel world," Mickey pointed out.

"Shore leave!" the Doctor declared, suddenly feeling that all was right with the (parallel) world, as long as they had a way to leave. "As long as we keep our heads down. Easy. No problem. Let's go tell her."

DWDWDWDWDW

Alone on the street, Rose wandered along the river for a ways before dizziness forced her to sit down on a park bench. She rubbed at her head, trying to stave off the headache that had been building from the moment the TARDIS had landed them here. Her head seemed full of noise and thoughts that didn't belong to her, and she couldn't tune it out.

If this was what telepathic development was like without a TARDIS making it easier, Rose was even more grateful for the time ship's interference.

Seeing her dad's face certainly hadn't helped her headache. She groaned and leaned forward, resting her head in her hands. The look on the Doctor's face when he told her—insisted—that it wasn't her dad… He had looked honestly afraid, and that was the only reason she'd agreed not to look for this world's Pete Tyler.

The fact that she'd had to rely on nonverbal cues to determine what he was feeling had her almost more off balance than being in a parallel universe. It seemed to make the Doctor feel better though—as soon as he'd realised their connection was broken, his shoulders had relaxed. _Maybe this'll give him the distance he wanted, and then when we get home, he'll be willing to talk to me._

Rose refused to believe they would be stuck in this parallel world indefinitely. She and the Doctor had gotten out of tighter spots than this before. His definition of impossible seemed a little broader than the dictionary's.

She straightened back up and looked into the sky, filled with zeppelins. Despite everything else, she couldn't help but love the idea of an adventure in a place so familiar and yet not quite home. However she couldn't forget the last time she'd disobeyed the Doctor and seen her father. Watching the Reapers devour her first Doctor… Rose shivered. If it was truly important to stay put, she would.

Her phone beeped and she pulled it out of her pocket, surprised to find it was being updated with the latest local software. She opened it up and listened to the news report about some local billionaire coming back to London, an idea building in the back of her mind during the whole thing.

Rose nibbled on her lower lip and looked back up at the zeppelin looming overhead. She knew what the Doctor would say, but he wasn't here right now and what he didn't know… She punched the query into the search bar on the browser. _Let's see what I can learn about this world's Peter Tyler…_

The world swirled around her, and Rose was dead grateful she was sitting down. She pressed her back into the bench, pushing down the nausea. It was the same kind of dizziness she'd experienced when the clockwork droids had tried to kill Reinette. She'd wanted to ask the Doctor about it last night, but his disappearing act had made that impossible.

The beeping of her phone distracted her from the rising feeling of resentment. She glanced down and selected the first hit: Vitex Corporation's official biography of Peter Tyler, founder and president. _Humble London beginnings, entrepreneur, struggling businessman, then he launched Vitex…_

It was the personal information Rose really wanted to know though, and she scrolled past the company's history until she saw a face as familiar to her as her own. Jackie Tyler stared back at her from her phone, with a date of birth and a wedding date.

_Still married Mum, what about me?_

But that was the end of the personal information. She stared at the phone. No kids. He was still alive, but she wasn't. She'd thought maybe that this was the world where everything went right, but what if right meant she didn't exist?

"There you are!" a familiar voice chirped off to her right, and she looked over to see the Doctor and Mickey walking toward her. "You all right? No applause, I fixed it!" The Doctor pulled something from his coat pocket and held it up. "Twenty four hours and we're flying back to reality."

She knew he didn't mean for his wording to hurt, but it did. Back to a reality where her dad was dead. But this wasn't reality either, if she didn't exist… but if this Pete didn't have a daughter, then maybe he wouldn't mind meeting her…

Her lack of enthusiasm sank in to both men. "What is it?" the Doctor asked, looking down at her phone.

The disapproval in his voice rankled. _Where does he get off telling me what to do, especially after avoiding me for a week?_ "My phone connected," she told him. "There's this Cybus Network, it finds your phone. It gave me internet access."

He cottoned on to what she'd done immediately. "Rose, whatever it says, this is the wrong world."

"Maybe that's why I don't exist," she shot back.

From the look in his eyes, that was not what he'd expected her to say. "What do you mean?"

"There's no Rose Tyler; I was never born. There's Pete, my dad, and Jackie, he still married Mum, but they never had kids."

"Give me that phone." The Doctor tried to take the phone from her, but she moved quickly, getting to her feet so he couldn't reach the phone without moving.

"They're rich," she went on, and despite her frustration with him, she wanted him to hug her, to tell her that she wasn't the one who had messed up her parents' lives and kept her mum from having everything she deserved. "They've got a house and cars and everything they want." She waited another minute, but he didn't say anything. "But they haven't got me," she finished and left the bench.

The same longing she'd been fighting against since they'd arrived in this world rushed to the surface, and this time, he wouldn't talk her out of it. She turned around to face the Doctor, ignoring the dizziness. "I've got to see him."

"You can't!"

"I just want to see him."

The Doctor shook his head. "I can't let you."

Anger swelled up in Rose. "You just said twenty four hours!"

"You can't become their daughter; that's not the way it works." He punctuated the statement with a hard shake of his head. "Mickey, tell her."

One look at her old mate's face and she knew he would side with her. "Twenty-four hours, yeah?" he said and jumped to his feet.

The Doctor stared at Mickey in confusion. This conversation had not gone as he'd expected. "Where are you going?" he asked frantically.

Mickey walked backward down the street. "Well, I can do what I want."

On his left side, Rose walked farther down the sidewalk. She held her phone up. "I've got the address and everything."

"Stay where you are, both of you!" he demanded. Timelines swam in and out of place again, and he was desperate to stop his companions before they did something they couldn't undo. "Rose, come back here. Mickey, come back here, right now!"

"I just wanna see him!" she insisted, and in the insistence in her voice, he could tell she was promising not to interfere, not like last time. But he knew how tempting it would be, once she saw him, to step in and say something… and once they became part of events here, everything he saw went out of focus.

Mickey distracted him from the uncertain future. "Yeah, I've got things to see and all."

"Like what?" he demanded.

Bitterness set Mickey's face into hard lines. "Well, you don't know nothing about me, do ya? It's always about Rose, I'm just the spare part."

As if to prove Mickey's point, the Doctor looked back at Rose. There was an apology in her eyes, but her jaw was set and he knew he wouldn't be able to change her mind. "I'm sorry, I've gotta go."

"Go on then," Mickey said, resignation in his voice. "There's no choice, is there? You can only chase after one of us. It's never gonna be me, is it?"

He looked after Rose and then turned to Mickey. _How did things go wrong so quickly?_ There was no way he could let Rose wander alone in a parallel universe. If something went wrong and she became trapped here… He imagined showing up at the Powell Estate without her, and he winced as the echo of Jackie Tyler's slap chased him across the Void.

Rose turned away and started to walk a little faster, and his moment to stay with her was almost gone. "Back here, twenty four hours," he commanded Mickey, and then chased Rose down the street.


End file.
